


only love can last

by annejumps



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Richie Tozier, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Angst, Blow Jobs, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Bottom Richie Tozier, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Depression, Drugs, Eventual Happy Ending, First Dates, First Kiss, Gay Richie Tozier, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, Insecure Richie Tozier, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Pining, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Rimming, Size Kink, Suicidal Thoughts, The Kissing Bridge (IT), Top Eddie Kaspbrak, Top Richie Tozier, Virgin Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annejumps/pseuds/annejumps
Summary: Richie Tozier, almost-famous stand-up comedian, has two secrets: at 40, he's both a closeted gay man, and a virgin.**Now complete**
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 87
Kudos: 368





	1. Chapter 1

From the time Richie first learns that making people laugh is a job you’re even allowed to have, most of the comedians he sees doing it on TV make jokes about women, and sex. 

When he’s young, women and sex couldn’t have less to do with his daily life; when he’s older, that’s still the case. 

At the start of his standup career, he knows people aren’t going to be interested in, say, hearing a guy talk about masturbating to _Sports Illustrated—Every Issue Except the Swimsuit Edition_ , definitely not in his corner of the country, so even if he could say that stuff out loud, it’s out of the question that he’d do it in front of an audience. Commercially, too, there’s no future in a guy joking about ogling guys in running shorts, at least not for Richie. But there’s always an audience for a guy being gross about women, and in his thirties and forties, he can afford to have someone else write the jokes for him. 

When he’s young, it’s not hard to see the immediate reaction those same types of gross comments about girls get him. The shocked laughs and disgusted reactions are addicting, if predictable and maybe a little too easy. Going blue is a standard for a reason. But even if people are more annoyed than amused, they still _see_ him, even if maybe it’s not really technically _him_ they’re seeing.

When he’s a teenager, some part of him figures if he keeps yapping about tits and ass all the time, no one will notice him staring too long at one of his best friends, probably his very best friend: Eddie. Who is pretty much the reason why he realizes he 

<>likes boys

might be a little different in the first place. Eddie is small and fierce, and he has big captivating brown eyes which are sometimes worried, sometimes angry or thoughtful or mischievous. All Richie has wanted in life since kindergarten is Eddie’s attention, those eyes on him. 

As to why he makes so many jokes about sex and yet doesn’t appear to have ever even touched a girl, well, that question answers itself: Richie’s kind of a grade-A dork. Thick glasses, messy hair, and gawkiness. He’s all elbows under baggy shirts and jeans. The real reason he hasn’t even touched a girl is more complicated than girls not being into him, but this is a pretty good cover, and besides, no one will ask him for corroborating details.

And hey, maybe part of him thinks if he keeps saying these things people have come to expect him to say, he’ll eventually convince _himself_ , too, that yes, he loves boobs, yes, he wants nothing more than to get into girls’ panties. 

After a while, you’re too deep into a bit and you can’t just stop. 

Nothing he says magically makes him want girls, though. 

Ridiculous gags about sex with Eddie’s overbearing weirdo mother are the most reliable in his arsenal. Perhaps most importantly, they get Eddie’s ire—and therefore his attention—every time. 

Richie’s relationship with his need for attention from Eddie is… complicated, he knows that from the start. Any attention from him is good, but getting an annoyed reaction is so. Much. Safer. Sure, Eddie’s cute when he’s annoyed, but when Eddie smiles at him, it’s too much for him to handle. It makes him want too much—want what, he isn’t sure. It’s wonderful and terrible, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. 

Plus, if he’s annoying Eddie, no one will suspect him of… whatever it is he has a feeling they should suspect him of. If the annoying behavior happens to include pinching Eddie’s cheeks, making kissyfaces at him, and calling him cute, well, obviously he’s joking, even if he’s really not. It’s practically a foolproof plan. There in plain sight, and nobody will know he’s serious. Unless maybe someday someone does guess. But it’s impossible to keep his hands off Eddie, and he can’t shut up about how cute he is. 

Working Eddie up is his favorite thing to do. When their new friend Ben shows them the underground clubhouse he’s built, and all seven of them—the Lucky Seven, the Losers, the weird kids—start spending time there, Richie hogs the hammock they strung up over his allotted time on purpose, because it incenses Eddie, who barges right in with Richie still in it having no intention of vacating. Not when Eddie always makes a big deal of kicking boisterously at him without ever actually hurting him, Mr. This Clubhouse is a Death Trap loudly complaining as he wedges himself in facing Richie on a hammock obviously not meant for two, legs deliberately in his space as Richie’s heart goes rabbit-fast for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. One memorable time as they squabble, after Eddie effortlessly disarms him by toeing his glasses off with an agile shoeless foot, Richie moves a hand to Eddie’s ankle and Eddie lets him rest it there 

( _holding him_ ) 

at least for a little while as they argue over Swamp Thing or whatever the hell. 

And he finds plenty of other excuses to touch Eddie. Every second he has his hand on Eddie like that, he doesn’t really even know what he or anyone else is saying, but he thinks and hopes he does a pretty good job of appearing to. 

Eddie never gets that hammock all to himself if Richie’s there. It’s a ritual, until they all stop coming to the clubhouse and he and even Eddie are too big for the hammock by themselves, let alone together. 

Puberty complicates the shit out of things. He literally can’t stop thinking about Eddie, and it’s hard to deny that the feelings are more than just _he’s my best friend and I can’t wait to see him every day_. He doesn’t feel this way about their other friends he’s known for the same amount of time: Stan, Bill. Or Mike, or Ben. Bev… sure, he loves Bev but he doesn’t feel the way about her he knows he probably should, not the way even he can tell Bill and Ben do. 

He wants, no, _needs_ to see Eddie, to talk to him. The hunger he feels to be the subject of Eddie’s intense focus is overwhelming. He daydreams about him; he night-dreams about him too, so to speak, nudge nudge, say no more. The first time it happens, the moment he’s awake and the surprise forbidden pleasure’s faded he lies in bed and cries, a mess of various sticky bodily fluids that are rapidly drying, and isn’t sure exactly why these hot tears keep coming. 

Rumor has it that a guy and his boyfriend who were seen kissing and holding hands were attacked on what everyone calls the Kissing Bridge, where all kinds of shit has been carved into the walls and railings over the years: declarations of love both secret and not, and statements of hate when it came to the type of love that wasn’t supposed to exist. 

The guys were hurt pretty bad and some even say killed, but Richie isn’t sure he believes it—with the number of violent rednecks around, who would actually walk in Derry with a guy in a way that made it clear he was your boyfriend? Even in the dead of night. Nevermind the deep terror in his gut whenever he thinks about the supposed incident, or the strange ache he feels at the very idea of _having a boyfriend_ , walking hand in hand with him. Unimaginable. 

The news talks about AIDS; it’s something that men like that get, men who have boyfriends. It’s a disease they get in their blood, according to what Eddie’s heard from his mother, and it kills them, and everyone understands it’s a punishment for what they’ve done wrong: the stuff Richie thinks about but doesn’t talk or joke about, although he doesn’t know enough to know any details.

He watches clips of parades on the news where men are holding hands, flamboyant, acting the way Richie knows makes them a target, and suspects it’s punishment for more than whatever it is they do. It’s for what they _are_ , what they can’t escape wanting. 

Even the nice people he knows in Derry have nothing nice to say about AIDS and the men who get it.

Of course, the idea of anything happening with another guy when he’s that age is about as likely as getting on a rocket to the moon. He’s solo as far as that goes, and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon, so self-abuse it is. When he jerks off, he’s never thinking about girls, even though he knows he’s supposed to be. In those moments, what’s on his mind is always broad shoulders, deep voices, cocks, even though most of what he pictures has to be drawn from his imagination (there are mysterious deposits of faded old girly mags in the woods of the Barrens in Derry, and he fakes his enthusiasm about those accordingly, but there are no images of naked men to be found anywhere). Although he can’t help doing it, he feels squirrely and gross afterward, and sometimes even thoroughly terrified, like someone at school or in town will somehow find out what he just did and what he was thinking about and tell everybody, like they’ll see what he’s done and what he is in something about how he stands, moves, talks. 

There are already assholes who call him all sorts of shit, like they see that in him somehow, like they know. He doesn’t Eddie to even suspect that what they call him has a kernel of truth in it. Yeah, they call a lot of guys names, but Richie’s always afraid something in his reaction tells them they’ve scored a goal. How do they fucking know, how is his constant stream of filthy remarks not throwing them off the scent? Is it making it worse? They see something in him like he sees in those men holding hands on TV, and Richie has no idea what they’re seeing or how he could hide it from them.

A few times too many, things go beyond just words and taunts in the hallway and threatening anonymous scribblings on bathroom stalls or his bookbag getting thrown over a fence. He gets shoved, smacked, tripped. He’s been punched a few times. Hockstetter, in Bowers’ gang, fucking _leers_ at him in the hallway and he doesn’t even know what’s being implied with _that_ , but he turns red and makes tracks away from him all the same, wondering if Hockstetter somehow _knows_ or is just fucking with him.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier doesn’t always, in fact doesn’t usually, know when to stop talking. But then, people expect smart remarks from him. It’s part of the whole back and forth, the dance, if you will. Someone jeers at him, he retorts, unwisely or not. Then, he has to dodge or succumb to some minor beatdown. Fair enough in its way; he wouldn’t claim that calling someone “idiot numbnuts” or “dickless wonder” or “shit-stinking jizz-covered ass-goblin” is meant as a gesture of peace, so it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s getting into. It’s just that with _this_ stuff, it’s somehow unrelated to him running his mouth, and running his mouth doesn’t really seem to help him.

One time, nobody physically hurts him but it terrifies him in a new way that stills something in him for good. The first and only time he sticks his neck out like that. Afterward, he pulls his head in, if you will, like a turtle retreating into the dark safety of its hard outer shell. 

He spends a hell of a lot of time in Derry’s arcade at the Capitol Theater perfecting his playing skills, although it really slacks off after the day he plays Street Fighter against a boy who happens to be kinda good-looking and who compliments his playing when he wins, and when they slap palms Richie’s fingers touch his for what he knows is a beat too long, and when the boy says he has to go, Richie finds himself asking him to stay for one more game with something in his voice that he doesn’t mean to telegraph, but can’t seem to help. And the boy… there was something in his face, wasn’t there? Something Richie’s responding to without thinking about it. 

And of course Bowers’ gang happens to show up at the arcade right then with Bowers himself loudly asking what the fuck is going on, if Richie’s trying to bone Bowers’ _cousin_.

The air curdles. The boy glances back at them in fear, and turns back to Richie, expression changed from the shy interest it had held before to a panicked stare, eyes narrowing as he draws back. The dreaded question, _Why are you being weird?_ Throwing Richie under the bus, loudly calling him a _fairy_ as Bowers stalks closer, with a face like he smells blood. Spittle flying as he screams at Richie, ordering him to get the fuck out.

The rest of the arcade is quiet and everybody is looking at him because yeah, what is his problem

 _what is he, some kind of faggot_? 

The air in the arcade is suddenly stifling and Richie literally runs away from the staring, knowing eyes and the clenched fists, hoping desperately to be forgotten about or at most for the incident to just be added to a running list of “times that Tozier kid was being weird.” He knows how close he comes to getting his ass really kicked that day, to something like whatever might have happened to those guys on the Kissing Bridge, if they’d really existed. Except, of course, that he’s alone.

He sits on the bench in front of the Paul Bunyan statue in the park, near the outdoor concert shell, and puts his face in his hands. Bowers had taken one look at him and seen right through him, seen what he didn’t even realize he was doing, made it gross, made everyone see it. 

What a fucking mistake. Fuck, none of that would have happened if Eddie had been there with him in the first place, but his mom is keeping him at home today. 

_Eddie_.

There’s a weight in his pocket, and he realizes he’s got his father’s knife there, because Ben asked him to bring it to the clubhouse yesterday to cut some switches to make a new screen over the hidden entrance, and his dad hasn’t noticed it’s missing yet. He briefly indulges in a fantasy of stabbing Bowers with it, cutting him, slicing his skin, but he knows he’d never dare. He has the urge to carve… something, though. He thinks suddenly of something he’s done before: scratch the letter _E_ in the surface of desks he sits at in school, in rulers, in the bindings of books. He doesn’t ever scratch _Eddie_ or his first and last initial— _EK_ feels too identifiable, even though anyone seeing it after the fact would assume Eddie would have done it himself—but it’s still satisfying, later, to see an _E_ and think of Eddie and the fact that he was the one who carved the letter.

He starts walking toward the Kissing Bridge. 

Completely alone, he looks at the array of carvings on the railings. Every time he’s gone by it recently, he’s focused on the words for boys

_like him_

who were that way, and how the words almost seem to shout at him, like they’re going to detach themselves from the bridge and leap on to him, dig down into his skin, making bloody lines in him everyone can see, cuts that will become scars he can’t get rid of. On those days, he turns from the words, walks quickly away. He never really notices the initials, or the so-and-so loves whoever-the-fuck, but suddenly he knows what he has to do. 

He looks around, making sure he’s still alone, listening for footsteps or an approaching car. Nothing.

Crouching, he takes out his dad’s knife. He knows he’s got to be quick, but with every scrape of the knife into the wood he presses his defiance. He carves _R + E_ , heart pounding, into the railing of the Kissing Bridge, where it belongs. The letters are kind of on the big side, all things considered.

And there, there are his and Eddie’s initials among the many carvings that declared lovers united forever, some old and some new, alongside the ones denouncing _faggots_ and _queers_. R and E united with a plus sign. Anonymous, maybe, but there all the same. He’s not sure who he’s telling this thing he can’t ever say, with this. Everyone, maybe. The world. 

His friends aren’t ignorant about the shit he gets, although no one ever really talks about it, because they get a lot of shit too, and some of it is along the same lines, as is pretty typical for misfits like them. Maybe they suspect what they say about Richie is true; maybe they don’t— 

_What are you, some kind of…?_

—but they don’t, he’s sure, know how he really feels about Eddie. He’s sure they see his comments as just jokes.

And he wants to keep it that way. But it’s hard. He can’t shut up sometimes, and it’s hard not to casually touch Eddie. One comment too far, one touch too long, though, and he might end up with his friends looking at him like the kids had that day in the arcade, his weirdness gone a step too far, with them figuring it out at last, knowing. Eddie too. Eddie knowing how Richie _really_ feels about him. 

He becomes aware that he could slip up at any time. He already can’t trust himself around Eddie, and he becomes less and less sure he can control himself, that he won’t blurt something out that’ll betray him, that he won’t have some sort of physical response he can’t help, like a game of Truth or Dare but worse, and Eddie will notice and ask him things like _Why are you being weird? You don’t…_ like _me, do you?_ and actually mean it, and he’ll have to answer. 

It seems like more of a threat every day. No one can know. Even the initials on the bridge feel like too much, although he doesn’t regret carving them. 

But all he wants to do is look at Eddie, touch him.

At some point in junior year, he decides he has to force himself to stop hanging around so much with Eddie.

It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, pushing Eddie away while making it seem like he’s just growing apart from him and no longer interested in hanging out. It fucking hurts like crazy every time he tries to look bored and declines going somewhere with him, when it’s all he wants to do. Eddie looks a little hurt and confused every time Richie turns him down, and it kills Richie to do it but he does, because it’s for the best. In the long run. Eddie would thank him if he knew what was really going on. Which he never will.

It’s a pain that’s actually physical, which he doesn’t expect. And not only does it hurt, it’s fucking difficult as shit, because their patterns are so ingrained. Their companionable bickering is second nature and sometimes Richie slips and teases him or calls him “cute” again or touches the small of his back or something, and it only makes it clearer to him that he has to make himself avoid Eddie entirely in order for this to work.

So he tries harder. 

Senior year he can’t even enjoy seeing Eddie in those little school uniform gym shorts (on the days Eddie doesn’t have a note from his mom getting him out of gym because he’s “too delicate,” that is, which is bullshit), because he just ends up being too fucking depressed about it all.

He hates it, he hates

_this feeling, this crush_

this… whatever it is. But the feelings don’t stop, no matter how much he wants them to go away.

Eddie still hangs out with the other Losers, the rest of their misfit outcast childhood friends—of course, why wouldn’t he—which means Richie has to try to distance himself from _them_ , too. That sucks, like pulling away from his best friend isn’t hard enough. It hurts making accidental eye contact with them in the halls and making himself look away blankly from their expectant expressions. He doesn’t have anyone to turn to for comfort, because ordinarily he’d go to them. They just assume he’s not interested in hanging out with them anymore, and he lets them believe it because obviously he can’t explain that he’s trying to avoid Eddie, and he can’t explain why he’s trying to avoid _him_ , either. They know him so well that shutting down as often as possible is really the only option, and when he does hang out with them he limits himself to either making dumb jokes that don’t give anything away or saying nothing at all.

He tries to seem like he’s interested in other things now, things that they wouldn’t understand. He starts hanging out at the record shop, collecting the new albums that come out, and eventually starts working there. Hanging out in the back alley with the other employees, he starts smoking weed and ends up joining a band. He’s not that great at playing bass, he guesses, but it's something to do. Bright colors and jokes of any kind will put him on the outs with this crowd, so he mostly just shuts up, smokes, and plays, and it’s fine. He can fake this, too, until he can go someplace else. He hates the thought of being away from the other Losers for real, but maybe it’ll be for the best. Getting out of Derry will probably be for the best, anyway.

Bev runs in the same circles, and he sometimes ends up smoking with her, but he makes sure they’re never alone together; otherwise, he’s afraid, he’ll end up confessing to her, sobbing out his reasons why he can’t let himself hang out with them all anymore. He suspects sometimes she knows more than she lets on, from the sad way she looks at him, but she doesn’t say anything, and he wonders if it’s just the weed.

He surrounds himself with Sonic Youth and the Breeders and Pearl Jam and Nirvana and the Pixies and Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., and keeps making mixtapes with his tapedeck because he can’t not do it; they’re basically all for and about Eddie, but he never labels them that way and he hides them from himself in a junk drawer. 

Richie grows about a foot overnight and is all arms and legs, and also notices Bowers is getting into more and more trouble outside of school, until finally one day he’s just not there anymore and the rest of his gang basically falls apart with no leader. Those factors combined basically mean he’s ignored by assholes, although he’s still never sure if and when it’ll start up again. It’s best not to draw attention to himself, as much of a fight as that can be; he still gets off plenty of sarcastic remarks, in a golden age of sarcasm, but there’s less likelihood that someone’s going to keep a watch for him after school now, for example. But then, he can run faster now, if need be.

If he can just make it out of high school, and leave Derry, leave them all, shit will eventually be fine, he thinks.

Senior year, the other Losers decide they want to go to prom, because none of them had gone junior year (being Losers) and this is, Bill points out, their last chance. And they want Richie to come, and it probably seems at first glance to them like a great way to get him back into the fold, almost like old times.

Both Bill and Ben want to go with Bev, but neither of them can work up the nerve to actually ask her, so Bill suggests they all go as a group, and if any of them are able to ask someone from outside the group to go as a date, that’s fine too, but at least they’ll be together. Sure, seems like a great idea. 

But the thought of going to prom makes Richie crazy. Turns out of course Eddie’s not allowed to even go, so what would be the point, Richie thinks, and if he had been allowed, that would mean being at prom without actually _being there with Eddie_ , not that boys going to prom together as a couple was even possible, because it wasn’t. And not that Eddie would want to go with him, anyway.

Just… it’s been making him crazy even from a distance seeing Ben and Bill courting Bev each in their own little ways, and the little ways she answers back, the easy smiles and sweet acceptance when he can’t even let himself think about Eddie for two seconds at a time or he’s afraid he’ll blurt out something he can never take back, something everyone will finally know is not a joke. 

So Richie says he doesn’t want to go, even though everyone else is obviously disappointed in him. Later, Stan says, “You could find somebody to go to prom with, you know, Richie. That girl in math class with the braids, I think she likes you.” 

“I can’t ask her, dude.”

“Yeah you could. She’d say yes.”

“I’m not fucking asking her, Stan,” Richie says flatly.

“You should, but you can still go alone. It won’t be embarrassing, I think I’m the only one of us with a date.” Richie remembers that Stan is going with a girl from his English class.

Richie snaps. “That’s not why I’m not going. I just fucking can’t, okay?”

“Grow up, Richie,” Stan says, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re jealous or whatever, but we’re seniors now. Get over it and ask somebody.”

“I’m not jealous of your little fucking girlfriend, Stan,” Richie says loudly. 

Stan tilts his head and looks at him consideringly, for a long time, like something is occuring to him, and he opens his mouth. Shit.

“Prom is fucking stupid, okay?” Richie yells at him before he can say what Richie suddenly knows he’s going to say. “It’s fucking stupid and I’m not going. Fucking go without me.”

Stan looks at him with a tight-lipped expression with mixed annoyance and pity. And they do fucking go without him. Richie’s new crowd doesn’t go to proms anyway.

After high school, Eddie miraculously manages to escape his mother’s clutches and goes away to school in another state. The night he leaves, after stilted goodbyes at his doorstep, Richie gets full-on drunk for the first time, and in the morning alone in bed sobs wretchedly through a nightmare of a headache until he’s able to go downstairs and pretend to his parents that nothing weird is happening and his eyes aren’t red and swollen and the idea that he might never see Eddie again isn’t on his mind.

Richie goes to a college in a bigger city in Maine, but it’s still fucking Maine. His college career is lackluster, and he considers dropping out since he’s usually bored and restless, but the best part of it is his time as a DJ at the campus radio station, where he can indulge his interest in music at what in retrospect turns out to be the height of grunge. It’s then he gets turned on to Throwing Muses, Belly, Tori Amos, Oingo Boingo, R.E.M.’s back catalog—not the most-underground, coolest shit out there, but he loves it. It’s weird being heard but not seen, saying things and making jokes in an empty room, but it’s freeing too, and he gets fanmail (as well as letters of complaint) so that’s fun, and he learns a lot about music. It’s something to do.

The station offices are next to the gay student union or club or whatever it is, and he can’t even look for longer than a glance at the door. He can’t—he can’t even think of himself that way, can’t imagine what would even happen if he went in there. It would probably get back to somebody in Derry, and then it would be a Thing, with the very best case scenario being his mother’s gang of friends constantly asking him if he’d found a nice boy yet, and the worst case scenario being a long stay in the hospital thanks to violent assholes. 

Or, you know, death.

Eddie sends out an email to the Losers, just a friendly reaching out that happens to include Richie. Richie doesn’t reply to the email, doesn’t contact any of the Losers since it’s been so long since they were on really friendly terms that it would be weird. But he can’t help looking Eddie up, seeing what he looks like and what he’s up to—not stalking, no, just some casual research. It hurts to think about him again, after all the time they spent together and the way he’d then purposefully kept himself away from Eddie. He’d been hoping that in the time since they’d last seen each other, he was starting to forget about Eddie, to not care anymore, but he really should have known better.

He knows that, even as close as they were, there’s no way in hell Eddie’s having the same problem he is. Eddie had stuck by his side all the time even though he complained about him plenty, and laughed at all his jokes (okay, most of his jokes…. Some of his jokes, and sometimes he tried to hide a snicker or snort of amusement, but Richie always caught those, mentally gathering up and treasuring those little reactions), but he has no reason to believe Eddie’s mooning over him in any way similar to how Richie moons over Eddie. 

He doesn’t expect to see Eddie again—his home life alone with his mother hadn’t been great and he’d taken the chance to get out of Maine altogether—and besides, Eddie’s not…. He wouldn’t be interested, that’s all. It’s a dead end, and Richie needs to accept that.

He kisses some girls in college, at parties when everyone’s drinking, but it’s simply friendly no matter how much part of him wishes he could just be a normal guy who makes out with drunk chicks at parties and feels them up. He just doesn’t fucking want to touch them all that much, is the thing. They’re fine, yeah, he just…. It’s nothing even like just watching, say, World’s Strongest Man or lumberjack competitions on ESPN (with roommates, it’s not like he can even watch those shows without being afraid that somebody might get suspicious), or even looking at the Brawny Man, that’s for damn sure.

Some girls ask why he’s not trying more, why he’s not interested or didn’t ask them out, and he smoothly deflects with a joke (or not so smoothly but whatever) and avoids them from then on. The campus is big enough that he might not see them again, and he’s not important enough to be the subject of gossip. If he’s anything, he’s just that wacky loudmouth DJ.

Richie studiously avoids the gay student union club thing and the people associated with it, except once at a particularly large party for their floor, one of the guys he knows is in it kisses him. He’s a more effeminate type, generally, with pale skin and big dark eyes, and he’s got glitter on his face, and he kisses Richie in a sort of dramatic show of it that’s kind of annoying, but they’re off in a corner so the show is thankfully for no one else but Richie. 

Richie can’t help a little gasp at the sheer difference in feeling of being kissed by a man, and the guy looks at him like he’s figuring something out, and when he opens his mouth to say something Richie abruptly says “Gotta go!” and leaves before he has to turn down an invitation to be a secretary at one of their meetings or something (he’s sure the guy isn’t going to ask him out or anything), super glad that they’re almost out for winter break. When he thinks about the memory he just remembers those big dark eyes and the firmness of the kiss. 

And yeah, he jerks off about it, and the minute the physical pleasure fades he feels like he’s sinking silently, like a rock dropped into the cool dark water of the quarry the Losers all used to swim in together when it was hot. He misses them all suddenly. He misses them all the time, in a way (missing Eddie goes without saying; that’s always there), but sometimes it comes back harder. 

Then he’s out of college and has only just kissed some girls and one dude, and sure it’s Maine so that kind of makes sense. With no career in mind and just a job at another record store, a spot in another directionless band, he gets on stage at an open mic night at a club where he goes sometimes to see bands, and finds he really fucking likes it. He keeps doing it, and after an agent he meets there gives him a business card and a plan of sorts, he moves to New York to get into comedy for real, or at least try. 

New York is so much more diverse than Derry, right, so he finds himself assuming that he’ll be _found_ here, found by some faceless guy who’ll teach him that it’s okay for men to hold hands in New York, who’ll teach him all the things he needs to know, as a man who’s interested in men. Or, hey, maybe he’ll meet the right girl, he’ll see he likes tits and ass after all, he was just going through something because Eddie was around, and that problem will be solved for him.

But turns out no one’s all that interested. The women seem to think he’s gross, which is fair enough since that seems par for the course, and which is not that inconvenient except when some of them try to hit on him and feel him up in bars and he has to politely shut them down with the reasoning being that hey, they’re super drunk. And the men seem to have no idea he might be interested, or simply don’t care enough to seek his interest. Gay men are supposed to want easy sex, quick anonymous encounters, handjobs and blowjobs in men’s rooms and parks, right? Richie doesn’t know how the fuck they find each other, and no one seems to be looking for him. Maybe it’s just as well that he’s not seen in back alleys getting up to shit with some dude. He has a budding career to consider, after all.

At least now he can in fact easily find, can maybe _too_ easily find, pictures of naked men. Yeah, pictures… and video footage. For a while there he’s afraid he’s going to become addicted to gay porn. Just viewing it for the first time nearly causes him to have a meltdown. He’s afraid someone will find out, the same fear he felt in the old days, but he can’t stop watching sometimes, can’t help coming to it as he does, desperately wanting to be touched that way, to freely touch.

In a moment of weakness, drunk one night, he comes on to his manager, Steve, a shortish dark-haired guy with brown eyes who’s patient and experienced enough with inebriated 

_closet case_

clients to put him to bed with water and aspirin, _alone_ , and act like it never happened. Thank God.

All right, so, yeah. He at least loves comedy. His jokes are… what they are, and his act is what it is—it’s literally just the same shit he’d spouted as a kid, with more details—but a lot of people seem to love it, and they have shitty taste, really, but he throws himself after the laughs even as he kinda hates himself for it. He cashes the checks. He gets more than decent gigs, he gets a following. He gets paid to make people laugh. 

And that was a dream of his, right? It should be enough, to do this, and he fucking pours himself into it, really. Because he truly does love it when people laugh at his jokes (although it’s weird after he hires writers because he just doesn’t fucking want to keep coming up with this shit himself, and they’re not really his jokes, but he’s saying them, right?). He loves when people _see_ him, even if it’s not really him they’re seeing—and if it’s not really him, that’s so much the better, right? And the fact that his act is all a lie—whatever, who’s counting, right? Who cares if he feels like a ventriloquist’s dummy, it’s a living and it gets a hand up his ass, hey-o. 

Everybody has to lie about something in show business. Hell, Larry the Cable Guy is really a drama major from Nebraska named Daniel.

In his thirties, he’s starting to panic because he’s no closer to finding women attractive and that seems like something he should just give up on, and nothing else has really changed. 

He’s still in NYC, occasionally making trips to LA and kind of hating it. He actually goes on one date out there, with a guy who strikes up a conversation with him at a coffee shop and asks him out, something that feels so unreal he keeps wondering if it’s some sort of prank with hidden cameras, like he’s on one of those shows. (That’s after a moment’s panic: how could the guy tell?) But he accepts because yeah, maybe this is it, maybe things will start working out now. He’s a wreck of nervousness the whole time, until the guy gets impatient with him when he kisses him at the end of the night and Richie freezes up. The guy tells him to not bother calling if he ever does find his way out of the closet or “whatever the fuck your deal is.”

_Whatever the fuck your deal is. Aren’t you some kind of…?_

He can only hope the guy doesn’t tell anybody, but despite being semi-recognizable depending on where he is, he’s still not really interesting enough to be gossiped about. Still, the possibility that he might be means he’s not exactly putting himself on the market.

The thing is, though. His entire act is about hitting on women, fucking women, cheating on his girlfriends, jerking off to _Hustler_ , etc. There’s still a paying audience for that shit, but more and more, that stuff is known as a red flag for protesting too much, for a closet case. That increasing awareness combined with the fact that no one, including no one close to him in his professional life, ever sees him on a date with a woman makes him feel like any day now someone’s going to figure it all out. The only way that skin-crawling fear isn’t like what he felt when he was younger is that people aren’t taunting him to his face or beating him up. And it’s not like that’s impossible. 

In the old days, he might have been set up with a willing beard, but he just can’t bring himself to do that to some poor woman, and God knows he can’t bring himself to ask Steve to make some calls. How the fuck do you even get something like that set up in the 21st century, anyway? Besides, people nowadays can see through beards most of the time too. It might just make it worse. Better to just not draw attention to himself offstage and hope that people just assume he wants to keep his private life private. Extremely private. Invisible. Non-existent. Comedians don’t make entertainment news columns anyway, right? Unless they’re dating starlets. Nobody seems to care, but the longer his career gets, the more worried he is that someone will do the math.

It’s okay, maybe, kinda, to be in your thirties and gay from a small town with a handful of casual kisses and no below-the-clothes action, _maybe_ , but when Richie turns forty, after the birthday party Steve throws him at a bar he has what pretty much amounts to a panic attack that night alone in his apartment, complete with vomiting. He’s literally middle-aged, that is if he makes it to fucking eighty, and tumbleweeds are blowing across his love life. He’s past forty, he’s barely been kissed, he’s… he’s a virgin. There’s a hit comedy about his situation, more or less, but it has a Hollywood happy ending, and not to be dramatic but he’s pretty sure he won’t.

When he was younger, it was at least plausible that he could tell someone he wasn’t experienced, and they’d get it—again, small town, gay, dorky, etc.—and maybe think it was cute. Now that he’s forty, he can’t imagine bringing it up. Nothing about him is cute anymore, if anything ever really was.

Hell, he can barely enjoy masturbating anymore. Fingering himself feels good in the moment, but half the time afterward, he just feels kind of depressed, because he’s alone. He still feels weird and shitty and guilty about it all, and then on top of that he feels shitty for not even feeling guilty over actually engaging in some sort of sexual behavior with another man. He’s just jerking off or fingering himself, not even very deeply, alone and feeling guilty about it. If he’s going to feel this way, he should really at least be having actual sex, but he can’t even accomplish that. He can’t even bring himself to order some sort of insertable to stick up his ass. He feels like someone will find out, like they’ll see it on his face that he had a big fat purple dildo inside him the night before, or something, and worse, that he liked it.

And it’s not even entirely about the sex. Sure, he’d like that. He’d _love_ that, actually, assuming he can ever get past the sheer embarrassment of explaining that _hey sorry, I have no idea what I’m doing because yes I’m starting to exhibit male pattern baldness but no, I have never had sex before!_

Because yeah, no, it’s not just about the sex or even the physical affection. Richie wants to be _loved_. He wants to be _in love_. He wants someone to think about him when they’re both off somewhere else and text him, to have a person he buys some dumb little thing in a tourist trap for because it reminded him of something they said, someone he can spend the morning making pancakes with or going on a walk with or taking a nap with, and just the dumbest shit like that, stuff he sometimes can barely look at couples doing on TV. The simplest shit in the world and he doesn’t have it.

Truth be told, yeah, he does have enough money to, like, get an escort or something. But he doesn’t want that, like, at all. He wants someone who actually wants him, not his money, and not someone whose job it is to spend time with him, either. Maybe it sounds stupid or corny to some people, but he’s not interested in that arrangement. He should be able to do this on his own without money as leverage; he just can’t seem to, doesn’t know how the way other people seem to know. And he wants to be wanted on his merits; unfortunately, no one seems to feel he has any merits. 

Maybe this just isn’t for him. If it was, it would have happened by now, right?

And the thing is, too, this far into the 21st century, he’s gone from being a teenager who felt guilty for being attracted to other boys to a man who still feels guilty for being attracted to men _and_ feels guilty for feeling guilty. He’s supposed to be over this by now. Everyone says it’s not a big deal anymore. But it is a big deal, to him.

Therapy? Out of the question. The first thing any decent therapist would do would be to make him look at exactly what he’s built a lifetime on not looking at. And if he doesn’t look right at it, maybe it will go away and stop mattering. A therapist will tell him he’s wasted too much time waiting for one particular man to make the first move who never will, and the finality of that is not what Richie wants to hear.

Alcohol—not a great substitute for therapy, he learns. Besides, he’s scared of getting out of control and having another Steve incident (but worse, with someone else, someone who won’t be understanding). Drinking alone massively cuts the risk that he’ll do anything like that, but it makes other things like aspirating on his own vomit more likely. Besides, it’s fucking sad. That said, it’s not like he doesn’t drink alone. He tries not to do it too often. But it’s hard—there’s something about just fucking getting drunk. As he gets older, though, the hangovers get less and less tolerable. He occasionally returns to pot when he really needs to relax, but it tends to leave him so unmotivated otherwise that he senses too much of it is probably not a fucking great idea. He does coke a couple of times, but it makes him feel weirdly blank and irritable, and he hates the crash afterward; the possibility of chronic nosebleeds and damage to his throat, not to mention the money down the drain (or, as they say, up the nose) turns him off it entirely.

And yeah, sometimes he does think about ending it all. But he’s afraid he won’t even be able to get that right.

He’s tried to tell himself for years that putting even more effort into his career, pushing down his other needs, will eventually make it all work out. He can deal with it, like this. His career will be enough. Eventually. Any day now, yeah, maybe. 

Maybe not. 

Maybe getting out of Derry didn’t just make everything fine.


	2. Chapter 2

He goes back to Derry for his mother’s birthday. He and his parents go where they used to go all the time, the Jade of the Orient Chinese restaurant; his treat, of course. It’s a strip-mall Chinese restaurant, which is weird in a Quaint Little Town™ like Derry, but it’s still in business so it’s got that going for it.

“Richie, wear a nice shirt,” his mother says. 

“This _is_ a nice shirt,” he answers, “it’s got buttons.” For some reason, something about being back in Derry makes him want to dress like he did as a kid: in loud printed button-up shirts. Not like he’s a fashion plate now, but still. Old habits die hard.

His sister can’t make it because she’s got some important surgery scheduled—she’s performing it, since she’s a doctor and not kind of a fuckup. She’s also married with kids. At least someone is getting things right. Richie’s parents stopped their small-talk inquiries into his personal life a long time ago, with some sort of weird silent understanding that there was… nothing to talk about.

“Richie, hon,” his mother says, “you remember your friend Eddie?”

Richie nearly drops the egg roll he’s picking up. “Uh, yeah, Mom, I do.”

“His mother passed away, her service was this afternoon. I stopped by. I knew there wouldn’t be very many people there; that woman kept herself isolated, didn’t she? She tried her best to do that with him too. I signed the visitors’ book and talked with him, just briefly.”

Holy shit, Eddie’s in Derry. Holy shit, holy shit! “You—”

“I told him we were planning to come here this evening and to stop by if he wanted to see you. They don’t have any more family here, I don’t think, and he always was a sweet boy. Shame about his mother being… the way she was.”

“Mom—” Richie scans the restaurant in a mild panic, wondering if he has time to flee.

“What? He was a good friend of yours, it would be nice for you to see him. He lives in New York City too, now, he probably won’t be around here for long. So many of you couldn’t wait to get out of Derry.”

“Mom, I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested in coming by. He probably can’t wait to leave. He might already be gone.” _Eddie lives in New York now too?_ he thinks. He guesses he hasn’t stalked—uh, searched—him in a while if he missed that. Not that it matters, right? He wishes he didn’t know Eddie lives in the same city he does, but there’s nothing he can do now about knowing it. But yeah, hey, not that it matters. 

Fuck, is he coming?! Richie’s not prepared for this. Not by a long shot.

And what if he doesn’t come by? He wouldn’t blame Eddie for wanting to just go home to his current life, but yeah, he can’t lie, he’d be fucking disappointed. God, the very idea of seeing Eddie here in person—he wants it with a suddenness that overwhelms him, makes his heart race. Even though it was Richie who put that distance between them back in high school, he really wants to fucking see him again. 

But what if Eddie doesn’t want to see _him_ again? Although really, why would he?

Richie looks up—it’s a surprisingly big restaurant, but they can see the lobby area from their table—and there he is. “Eddie,” Richie says, to no one in particular.

Richie knows what Eddie looks like now, because yeah, the stalking, but seeing him in person is weirdly like he just saw him as a kid yesterday. He’s that unchanged, and yet he’s completely changed. 

Eddie was never a particularly big kid; he was definitely shorter than Richie, but never as wispy and delicate as his mother made him seem in her rants about how Eddie couldn’t go do this, couldn’t go play that because he’d get hurt. She wouldn’t let him play baseball, race in a soapbox derby (something he desperately wanted to do), or climb trees, even though he was actually a sturdy, strong little kid in his way. He had dark, soft hair that threatened to curl despite the neat way his mother combed it out; she did it even when he was in high school. His hair is still neat, and he still has those big dark eyes that Richie knows all too well. Eddie’s face looks drawn, smudges under his eyes.

But God, he’s still Eddie, and looking at him, Richie swallows hard and feels his heart settle somewhere in his stomach like a stone sinking to the bottom of the quarry.

_Fuck!_

“Eddie, sweetheart,” his mother says, the sound of her voice breaking through the sudden slowing of time that seems to have shocked Richie’s brain. She waves. “Over here!” Staring at him, Richie puts down the last part of his egg roll. It doesn’t take Eddie long to get to their table.

“Hi there, Eddie,” his father says. “Good to see you again, been a while.”

“Hi, Dr. Tozier, hi again, Mrs. Tozier.” Richie steels himself for a blank expression, but when Eddie looks at him, he actually perks up, raising his brows. “Richie,” he says, holding out a hand. Richie stands, watching Eddie’s eyes widen as he apparently takes in his height. The feeling of Eddie’s hand in his own even for just a brief shake is like an electric jolt. Eddie doesn’t show any sign of being affected by it, so Richie figures he’s just that touch-starved.

“Hey, Eds,” he says over the deafening noise of his own heart pounding. “Long time, no see.” Suddenly, he can’t help smiling. He feels like he’s shotgunned some espresso, swallowed a rainbow made of butterflies, or some shit. Yeah… he’s a teenager again, maybe, when it comes to Eddie. Just like that. Unable to stop himself, he winks.

Eddie seems to try to stop himself from grinning back, and does anyway. “Don’t call me that,” he says, like he used to chide Richie, to no avail. So Eddie remembers. He has those dimples, still.

“Hey, Eds, how’s your mom?” Richie can’t help saying, low enough that his mother doesn’t catch it.

Eddie gives him a withering look. “Asshole,” he hisses back, also low, but it sounds fond, or at least Richie would like to think it does.

They both sit. It’s a four top, and Eddie takes the empty place across from his father, to Richie’s left. Richie is aware of every millimeter of space in the air between them, and he can’t stop looking at Eddie. At the same time, he feels like he can’t possibly ever look at him enough.

Parents always liked Eddie, so clean and polite with adults, and never liked Richie as much because he was foul-mouthed and always getting into shit. Pretty fucking ironic, though, that Eddie’s mother basically terrorized him into that nice behavior, while Richie’s parents were totally normal. When he was away from his mother, when he was just with other kids, Eddie was a little weird, maybe, but otherwise a normal kid (well, allowing for his tendency to rant at them about safety concerns and the fact that he had not one but two fannypacks filled with medical supplies). That fucking mother of his, though. She definitely didn’t like Richie, thought he was a bad influence, and she never even suspected the way Richie felt about him, he knew—otherwise she’d probably have driven Richie out of town with an angry mob holding torches and pitchforks. Anything to keep her precious son from being polluted. Richie had been right to distance himself.

“I’m so sorry again, about your mother,” his mom says, and his father nods. Eddie’s smile for them is more strained, and Richie figures he must be sick of getting condolences for his nightmare of a mother.

There’s a beat of silence before Richie says, “I think we’re all sorry about a lot of things regarding Eddie’s mother, probably least of all that she’s fucking dead. Good riddance, right, Eds?” He raises his glass of water. If Richie’s parents weren’t here, he’d have added something along the lines of _but I will miss how great she was in the sack_. 

“Richie!” his mother scolds, albeit halfheartedly. “Be respectful.” 

Eddie gives Richie a stern look, just like he would have back in the day for being inappropriate (like being inappropriate wasn’t Richie’s entire MO) and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Tozier.” In short order, though, the almost-glare becomes a real smile, a small secret grateful one just for Richie, like Eddie can’t help it, because yeah, finally someone fucking said it. Richie’s heart pounds even faster just from getting that smile. He feels like he’s thirteen again and Eddie’s laughed at him trying to do a cartwheel and failing. Richie drinks and is thankful for the cool water down his gullet. 

_I burn, I pine, I fucking perish, or whatever the fuck_.

“Oh, Eddie, I told you,” his mother says, “you can call me Maggie. You all aren’t kids anymore.”

“You can call me Dr. Tozier,” his father tells Eddie, who laughs. “I’ll answer to Wentworth, but don’t call me Went.” 

Eddie grins. “Yessir, Dr. Tozier.”

Eddie’s wearing a plain black suit and a black tie, of course, and a crisp white shirt. It looks like it’s right off the rack, no custom tailoring or anything, and he looks kinda like a kid wearing his first suit, and maybe he too went back in time when it came to returning to Derry. The stark lack of color makes him look paler than he probably usually does, plus the fact that he’s probably fucking stressed out because he’s in his shithole hometown for his horrible mother’s funeral, but Eddie’s still got those expressive—okay, fucking beautiful—big dark brown eyes. 

Damn it. Shit, he’s really got it as bad for Eddie as he ever did, probably worse now, he thinks. _Stop staring at him_ , he thinks to himself, but he can’t. He never really could.

Richie’s father asks Eddie about his job, something called a risk analyst. His voice is different, obviously, but Richie still hangs on his every word, even as he teases him for having such a boring job. Richie always wanted Eddie to look at him when they were kids, even though he sometimes couldn’t take it when he did, and Eddie mostly talking to his father but not him right now is making him want to jump up and wave his hands in the air.

The server, seeing an addition to their party, comes over to give Eddie a menu (Richie takes the opportunity to order a beer), and as he takes it, Richie sees that there’s no ring on Eddie’s left hand, and then just as his heart skips a beat at that, he realizes that there’s a band of untanned skin on his finger. So, there was a ring, and it was there for a while, and now it’s not. Eddie had been _married(!)_ , and now he apparently wasn't. 

“Eddie, holy shit. You got _married_?!” he finds himself saying aloud, tone rising with the question.

“Yeah, and then I got divorced.” Eddie raises his left ring finger with that pale band on it like it’s his middle one and he’s flipping Richie off.

“I’m not sure whether congratulations are in order or not,” Richie remarks.

“They are,” Eddie says shortly, and orders.

Richie’s mother says, “Since you two both live in New York, you should meet up.” Richie’s heart is getting a workout this evening.

“Mom—” Richie says again, feeling like a whiny kid.

“We should,” Eddie agrees. And then something makes him add, brow furrowing, “If you want to, that is. You’re probably really busy—” With a pang, Richie remembers every time he forced himself to turn down an invitation from Eddie in junior and senior year.

“Uh, yeah, no, not as busy as you’d think, yeah, that’s fine,” Richie says, feeling a flush of heat in his neck. The topic of New York leads to Eddie and his parents talking about the stock market, and that’s just not right, but at the same time he’s glad his mother is distracted from trying to set up a playdate for him with Eddie. “You guys are so boring, come on,” he says, before thanking the server for his beer, which he takes a good long drink of.

“How’s the standup going, Richie?” Eddie asks then. “Saw you on ‘Conan’ the other night.”

“Oh, yeah, that was a repeat. I’m taking a break between tours right now,” Richie says casually, instead of what he’s thinking, which is just _Holy shit_. His set had largely consisted, as usual, of jokes about women, jokes he hadn’t written. There’s nothing about his public presentation that even implies he’s anything other than some leering straight guy—well, other than the fact that he’s never seen with women—and he’s used to that by now in its fucked-up way, but somehow Eddie thinking those were his jokes, that he’s like that, makes him feel ill, even as he’s breathless with pleasure at the idea that Eddie actually watched him on TV, and is telling him now, in person. He hopes he looks like he’s reacting casually, but he suspects he isn’t. “What did you think? Because if you liked it, I wrote everything. If you didn’t, no, I don’t write my own material.”

Eddie scoffs. “Let’s just say it’s not exactly to my taste.” There is what looks like a fond glint in Eddie’s eyes under the exasperation—Eddie was more than used to Richie’s jokes and to voicing his disapproval of them, even when he laughed at them. “But good for you. Seriously, dude.”

“Thanks, man. Straight to the top,” he says. “Yesterday ‘Conan,’ tomorrow ‘Seth Meyers.’”

“Honey, you didn’t tell me you were going to be on ‘Seth Meyers’ too.”

“It’s just a joke, Mom. But Steve is working on maybe getting me a Netflix special.” To Eddie, he says, “Steve’s my manager. Yeah, that’s right, I pay someone to manage me. Full-time job.”

“Jesus. Poor guy. Hope he has hazard pay and good insurance.” Eddie chuckles softly, shaking his head, and Richie smiles directly at him. They look at each other for what feels to Richie like a long time. 

Not that it matters, right?

Richie feels like he hasn’t eaten anything and also doesn’t want to, and his first beer is gone and suddenly the meal is almost over. He orders a second when they agree as a group that yes they do have room for dessert. That’s downed pretty quickly and he’s considering a third but decides against it—his mother will say something, or after three Eddie will offer him a ride, and he wouldn’t want that, would he?

Once they’re all done with their green tea ice cream and fortune cookies, Eddie says to him, “Your mother’s right, we should meet up back in the city.”

“Yeah, she’s right a lot,” Richie says, wishing he’d ordered whiskey instead.

“Eddie, honey, where are you staying?” his mother asks. “Richie has a rental car, he can probably give you a ride back there, no need for you to take a taxi or one of those services. You didn't have too much to drink, did you, hon?”

“Oh, thank you, ma’am, but I have a rental car too, I drove here,” Eddie says, as Richie tries not to breathe a sigh of relief, even as he’s disappointed, remembering how in high school they’d drive around in his old beater, singing along to the radio and acting like dumbasses. Eddie complained vociferously about his admittedly hazardous and distracted teenage driving (he still kept riding with him anyway, no matter how he complained, as long as his mother didn’t find out). Eddie of course wasn’t allowed to drive and didn’t have a car until he was eighteen and ready to go out of state to college, and even that had been a battle (so Richie heard, since they weren’t talking so much then), but prior to that Eddie would ask to drive his car on the backroads and side streets sometimes, and Richie would let him, of course. Eddie turned out to be a real speed demon who loved being behind the wheel, seeming to have a knack for it, and Richie saw again up close what a boisterous kid he was when his mother wasn’t caging him in and smothering him in that dark, dank, almost silent house.

Until Richie put a stop to all that fun together.

Richie insists on paying for Eddie’s meal too, and after he thanks him, as Richie’s parents get ready to go he’s surprised, putting it mildly, to feel Eddie’s hand on his forearm. “What’s your number? I’ll text you my info,” he says, his phone in his other hand. “I owe you.”

“Nah, you don’t owe me— Uh.” Richie reels off his number, face feeling hot. Within moments he hears the _ding_ of his phone getting a text message.

“Okay. Call me or whatever when you’re back in the city, we’ll catch up,” Eddie says, and stands. Richie follows suit, hyperaware of Eddie next to him, of Eddie gently slapping him on the back before they all leave: Richie in his rental, Eddie in his, his parents in their old car. 

He doesn’t even turn on the radio on the drive back to his parents’ house, where he’s staying. He resolutely does not allow himself to think about Eddie when he’s in bed in their guest room. He is not going to jerk off thinking about his straight childhood best friend, in his parents’ house, when he’s in his forties. Maybe later, somewhere else, he will. But not tonight.

He goes home, and a week goes by. He doesn’t contact Eddie. A few times, he starts to, and then stops. What would he even say? 

Eddie was just being nice, anyway. He’s probably busy.


	3. Chapter 3

When Eddie texts him a few days after he decides he isn’t going to contact him, he’s shocked. Eddie wants to get drinks. Sure, okay. He does want to see Eddie again—God, he wants to desperately—but Eddie’s straight, he thinks Richie is straight, they haven’t been in contact for years, after Richie purposefully made things that way. The time they spent in the restaurant notwithstanding, Eddie might not even want to be his friend like that anymore, and he’s just asking out of politeness or to appease Richie’s mother, or something. 

Two minutes into his time at the bar with Eddie, and he knows that’s wrong. They’re just as good friends as they ever were. They fall easily again into teasing and joking with each other—well, mostly it’s Richie teasing Eddie and Eddie pretending not to like it, like before. Without his parents here harshing the vibe, it’s just like old times. 

And something about not being in fucking Derry feels freeing, too.

Eddie looks good, fuck. He’s got on a nice navy suit, better tailoring than the funeral one, and that and the crisp white shirt (no tie) sets off his tanned, olive skin. And those fucking eyes. At least being at a bar with him gives him a perfectly fucking plausible reason to keep looking at Eddie, since they’re out at a bar together fucking talking to each other. He can only hope there’s not some pathetic hungry look on his face. There must not be, since Eddie doesn’t act like there is. Eddie’s totally oblivious, and that’s great.

An hour and a few drinks into it, Eddie leans in and says, “Richie, I have to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” 

Eddie’s voice gets quieter. “You already know I divorced my wife.” He holds up his left hand, where the ring that left behind that pale strip of skin most definitely is not.

“Yeah, I know. Good for you, dude…?” Richie’s a little confused. Why is Eddie telling him this, again, now? Richie flinches slightly at the thought of Eddie having been married, and to a woman... although it would probably be worse if Eddie had been married to a man. Wouldn’t it? Ha ha. Why would he even think that? Eddie’s straight.

“I divorced my wife because I’m gay,” Eddie says, and Richie very nearly drops his full glass of beer.

“Fuck,” he mutters, heart pounding, wiping up the small splash of foam and liquid on the table. “Yeah, okay. So, uh, you’re, uh… gay,” he says, and clears his throat. “Right.” There is what feels like a very long silence. Richie feels like he’s spinning, or the rest of the world is.

“The divorce was finalized about a year ago,” Eddie eventually says. “I’ve been dating off and on since then. It’s, uh… weird, not just because I was married to her for so long and didn’t do much dating before, but now, it’s like… men, you know?” He stops himself, and laughs. “No, you wouldn’t know.”

“I would not,” Richie says immediately, blinking. “Not a dater of men, me. Not so much.”

Eddie laughs softly. “Right. Yeah, so. Hey, it means a lot to me to be able to tell you that. Like… I wanted to do that, if we were going to start hanging out in the city, because… that’s where I’m at, now, and I know we’re all from a small town or whatever, but it’s important to me that you know the truth.” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “The truth. Truth is good. Absolutely. No problem, man.” He downs the rest of his beer.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, smiling, maybe a little nervously. “It’s still kinda new to me, saying that to people.”

“I can only imagine. Yeah, uh, I’m here for you, man.” _I could tell him now_ , he thinks wildly. _'Hey, weird coincidence, dude, I'm gay too, what are the odds!' Nah—I can barely even say it to myself, let alone fucking Eddie. Gonna be too late soon, the window’s almost gone_. But he doesn’t add anything; he just tries to look neutral, supportive. Something. 

_Fucking coward_.

“I know it’s probably hard for you to grasp,” Eddie continues, “what it’s like being attracted to men, and all that.”

Richie manages not to choke on his beer as dozens of pornographic images from scores of jerkoff sessions pass though his mind, before his gaze settles for an instant on Eddie's throat and he dies a little inside. “Yeah, probably. You know me.” With his hands, he makes the universal sign for an hourglass female figure, and makes a noise like an old-school car horn. Eddie smiles at that.

“I’ve just felt so much better since I admitted it, you know? I mean I’m not exactly going back to Derry and taking out an ad in the paper, there are still assholes around, but… just being like, ‘Hey, Ryan Reynolds is hot as well as funny and I can admit all that now,’ it’s… a relief.” 

“I bet,” Richie croaks. _Fucking Ryan Reynolds_ , he thinks. _With his fucking beady-ass eyes that are too close together. Asshole_. He knows for a fact that Ryan’s really nice, but come the fuck on. ...He is hot, though, Eddie’s right.

Eddie smacks him on the back. “Really though, thanks, Richie.”

“Anytime,” Richie answers, and tries his best for a convincing smile. It’s probably pretty weak.

They go out for drinks a few more times, because Eddie keeps asking and Richie wants to see him, and Eddie sometimes tells him about the dates he goes on. Richie tries to seem encouraging. Eddie says it’s been really weird to get used to, and that he’s been in fairly intense therapy dealing with it all: his history with his mother, his ex-wife and her apparent similarity to his mother ( _hoo boy_ ), his “internalized homophobia,” how to come out to certain people, et cetera, but he thinks he’s made a lot of progress. And Richie has to agree. Somehow Eddie fucking Kaspbrak is more or less a well-adjusted out gay man, despite the best efforts of Sonia Kaspbrak, and he, Richie Tozier, is not.

Eddie says that in trying to figure out his way in the dating world, he’s been trying to gauge whether he's attractive, and Richie stifles a scream. Eddie tells him about the first time he realized a man was openly hitting on him, and how flattered he was, and Richie clenches and unclenches his fists on his thighs, under the table.

Eddie says he knows Richie wouldn’t be interested in the details of what happens when he takes the guys home or they take him home, and Richie nearly hurts himself limiting his reaction to a shake of his head and a mild chuckle. _Kill me, please_ , he thinks. _Murder me right here_.

Being around Eddie, though, makes it clear to him that he can’t deny what’s really going on with himself anymore. 

Avoiding thinking about it is no longer working for him. He lets himself think the words: _I’m gay_. Every time he looks at Eddie, he thinks _I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay_. Alone at home, he whispers it to himself with his eyes closed. Then he whispers it while looking in the mirror, looking into his own eyes.

 _I’m gay_. 

Finally he decides he has to tell someone, just say it flat out, to someone else. He wants to tell Eddie, and that would make sense. But… if he does, what if Eddie doesn’t believe him, or thinks he’s coming on to him? 

( _You don’t…_ like _me, do you?_ )

They might both be gay ( _...shit!_ ), but it’s clear Eddie isn't interested in him that way, and it would all be fucking weird. But he’s got to say it. Eddie was brave enough and trusted him enough to tell him.... Eddie is still his best friend.

He gets to their next meeting early, so he can already have one drink under his belt when Eddie gets there. Then he has another, and then Eddie shows up. 

Things go as they usually do, shooting the shit, Eddie mentioning a little bit about the date he was on recently, apologetic— “I know you’re not interested, sorry” —and then something about his work, and Richie keeps thinking _I’ll tell him next thing, I’ll tell him_ , and then there’s never a good time and then Eddie is looking at his pricey watch and saying he needs to get going because tomorrow is a work day, and as he is halfway standing up Richie blurts out, “Eddie. I’m gay.”

Holy fuck, he said it out loud. To someone. _To Eddie_.

Eddie stops, blinks and furrows his brow. “Rich…? Is this….” He looks puzzled, confused, then suspicious, and then hurt. He says quietly, “Is this… a joke? Are you mocking me? Please tell me you’re not because that’s not very funny—”

“I’m not joking,” Richie says, aware that he’s trembling. His head is pounding. “I’m fucking serious as a heart attack, dude. I’m… I’m gay. I like men.” He keeps his voice low, feeling his face burning. Jesus, a dark bar in Manhattan and he can still barely say the words.

Eddie looks at him for what seems like forever until something like acceptance that Richie is being truthful comes over his face, and he sits back down. He still looks puzzled. “But… your act,” he says.

“Just that—an act. All fake. All this time, just a damn… stage persona.” Not just his stage act, he wants to add, but doesn’t. Maybe Eddie gets it anyway.

Understanding dawns on Eddie’s face, and Eddie’s brow creases in compassion. “I’m sorry.”

That’s unexpected, Eddie having sympathy for his having to fake something so ridiculous for all these years, and Richie sucks in a breath, afraid for a moment that he’s going to cry. “Yeah. Thanks.” He remembers then that Eddie might think Richie’s coming on to him. “I’m not, like,” he adds hastily, “hitting on you, man, by the way.”

“Oh?” Eddie asks, expression carefully neutral, like he’s trying not to show his disgust or alarm at the suggestion. 

“Yeah, no, sorry, it’s stupid. I know you wouldn’t be interested anyway—”

“I wouldn’t?” Eddie tilts his head, examining him. 

“Well, no.” Fuck, he doesn’t want to explain what he means. Richie feels his neck and face burn. He looks down at himself, and shrugs. “Yeah, no, man, I mean, I’m just… some schlub comedian, I know. I’m just….” _I’m no Ryan fucking Reynolds_. He remembers Eddie thanking him, and quickly goes to that angle. “Anyway, man, thanks for letting me do that. You… you get it.”

“I do.” Eddie nods. He’s still looking at him really closely, and it’s still making Richie’s face burn.

“So… thanks.” Richie clears his throat. “Anyway, sorry, dude, you said you had to get going. I’ll… see you later.”

“Yeah, Rich. Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah, man.”

Richie stares at his empty whiskey glass and makes a mental note to tell his mother he’s gay. He’ll have to tell his sister, and also Steve who will probably sigh and hang up, but he won’t tell them now, he decides. Not yet. Maybe he’ll tell the other Losers, although he hasn't reached out to them in years and he’s not sure word from him will be welcome. He wonders if Eddie is still in contact with them, if he’s told any of them so far, and finds himself selfishly hoping he’s the only one that knows now, like Eddie is the only one who knows about him. ...Well, other than Steve, but that doesn’t count, he didn’t _say_ it and there’s plausible deniability. 

When he gets back to his apartment, standing in his foyer he suddenly pictures Eddie’s mother rolling, slowly and laboriously, in her gigantic grave, shrieking bitterly in futile dismay, and he laughs his ass off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a long chapter, but things are escalating quickly!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When we last left Eddie and Richie, they'd come out to each other. Richie assumed Eddie wouldn't be interested in him, and Eddie's response to that was "I wouldn't?" Folks, I think maybe Eddie is interested in Richie.

Eddie texts him like normal the next day, and they meet up again and it’s fine. It’s cool. They came out to each other, and they’re still (best) friends. 

They keep meeting up for drinks, sometimes coffee or lunch. Of course, the problem now is that Richie wants Eddie, he still feels the same way about him he apparently always has, _they’re both fucking gay_ , and he’s no closer to getting him than he was before.

Because Eddie is not interested in him. 

Eddie is always encouraging him to put himself out there, to go to such-and-such bar, to get on such-and-such app. Richie absolutely does not want to do any of it, so he doesn’t. He considers lying to Eddie and saying that he is, since he wants to try for Eddie’s sake, and Eddie means well and wants him to be happy. Eddie just doesn’t know what his happiness would actually mean, and if he did know, it would be two tickets to Awkwardtown. 

He’s not comfortable with lying about not wanting to date to Eddie, though, in the end. Instead, he tells Eddie it’s probably too soon for him—he hasn’t told his parents or his manager yet, after all. He’s not going to get to date Eddie through going to a bar or using an app, so it all seems pointless.

Eventually, he tells Eddie he’s just not interested in dating right now at all.

“That’s too bad,” Eddie says, looking at him a long time before adding, “because I was thinking of asking you out.”

Richie stares at him. It feels like a long time until he’s able to speak, and then it’s like he can’t shut up.

“Uh. What?” He huffs out a laugh. “What? I could have sworn you just said you were thinking of asking me out. But that can’t possibly be right. I mean. What. No fucking way.”

Eddie looks stricken. “So, 'no fucking way,' you don’t want to—”

“No, no, no—” Now Eddie looks hurt, and in no world does Richie want to be responsible for really hurting Eddie Kaspbrak— “No, man, I’m saying, no way you were really asking me out.”

“So you weren’t actually saying ‘no’ to me asking you out.”

“No, but you can’t really be serious, I mean, come on.”

“I can’t?” Eddie raises his brows. “You’re telling me what I can and can’t be serious about?” There’s another glimpse of the little ferocious Eddie he fell head over heels for (not that he didn’t also love him when he was sweet). “You’re the comedian, I’m the serious one, remember? And I would never joke about something like that.” His big dark eyes do look very, very serious. “I want to take you out to dinner, Rich. Like, an actual date.”

“Okay. Yeah, uh… okay.” His mouth feels unbelievably dry and his hands don’t feel real. His heartbeat is shaking his chest, his entire body.

“Good. Great. I’ll be in touch.”

Richie blinks after him.

Great. So the one thing he’s wanted has happened—Eddie asked him out. 

...And now it’s just a matter of time until he figures out that Richie’s barely dated, barely kissed, hasn’t had any sexual contact, and at his age. He’s more emotionally and romantically stunted than someone like Eddie deserves to have to deal with. Eddie’s apparently doing well, for his part—he’s not going to be interested in ushering Richie through the basics of stuff he should have experienced twenty fucking years ago or more. Richie’s way too much trouble for him, he just doesn’t know it yet. 

But holy shit, he’s going on a date with Eddie. An actual _date_. He considers cancelling, but of course he doesn’t. It’s what he’s always wanted, even if it is a bad idea. God, he’s wanted it so badly he can’t say no to himself. 

“You know,” Eddie says as they sit down at the restaurant, the restaurant where Richie is on a date with him, “I wasn’t sure you’d say yes for this.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t sure you’d be interested. I know in high school we kind of grew apart, you didn’t want to hang around with me as much....” Eddie shrugs, blushing a little, looking down at the table as Richie stares at his eyelashes and doesn’t say anything. “I wondered if I’d see you when I was in Derry for my mother’s service, even though that didn’t make sense because I was sure you didn’t live there anymore, but I didn’t think I was going to look you up. Good thing your mom happened to stop by.”

“Yeah, good thing,” Richie says with a short laugh. “Hey, also, good thing your mother died.”

He jokes with and teases Eddie through dinner, because he can’t not do it. He missed him so fucking much for so long. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He’s got all of his attention, it’s just the two of them, and he never wants to leave this fucking table because once they do, shit will start happening, and from here it’s all doomed. It was all doomed anyway, he’s sure, but at least for now they can be together at this table.

He’s wondered more than once whether Eddie feels sorry for him and his failure to date normally, and whether this is a pity date. Throwing him a bone, if you will. It’s a fucking horrible thought, and worse yet, Richie knows that even if he knew for a fact that Eddie pitied him, he’d still be on this fucking date. He’s that gone for him. He’s been that hungry for just being around him, all this time. Shit, he’d barely even care if Eddie was doing this on a _dare_. 

He tries to draw the dinner out as long as it can be drawn out, ordering dessert and then coffee too, until the number of other people in the dining room starts to noticeably dwindle and they’re probably about to get some pointed table-cleaning and vacuuming from the staff.

Outside, he realizes with shock that _fuck_ , this is the end of the date, and whenever they part ways, whether it’s here or somewhere else, Eddie might try to kiss him, or he might _not_ try, which might be worse. They both took the subway to get here, but they need to get on different lines to get home. 

“So,” Richie says, hands in his coat pockets, “I paid for your meal in Derry, and you got mine here, so I guess we’re even and you don’t have to put out. Otherwise I might ask you to come up and see my etchings.”

Eddie just smiles at that, not the guffaw Richie had been unrealistically hoping for. Eddie steps closer— _oh fuck oh fuck_. “I had a really good time tonight with you, Rich,” he says, low, looking into his eyes. Eddie raises up on his tiptoes, and kisses him.

Richie closes his eyes, and doesn’t move his hands from his pockets. He bends down just slightly, reflexively as Eddie cups his jaw and pulls him closer. He just barely opens his mouth, again partly out of surprise, and the unbelievable touch of Eddie’s tongue against his own sends a shockwave through him. He can’t handle it suddenly, and he pulls back with a gasp. Eddie blinks at him.

“Yeah, I had a good time, too,” Richie says, and clears his throat and tries to smile like he wasn’t just being incredibly weird. “Nice to see you, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says immediately.

“I’ll be in touch, Eds,” Richie says, finally taking a hand out of a pocket to give him a lame little wave before he walks to his station.

Fuck, Eddie’s probably not going to want to talk to him again after that. Eddie didn’t even mean anything by that kiss—it was just a standard end-of-date kiss, and Richie couldn’t even handle that. If it had been a pity date, hopefully Eddie’s need to show charity was satisfied now that he saw Richie was a hopeless cause.

That fucking kiss. The entire way back to his apartment, his cold, empty, dark apartment, he can practically still feel Eddie’s hands on his jaw, holding it and pulling him closer. Can still feel the kiss, can still taste it. 

God, he’s so ridiculous and pathetic. The first kiss he’s ever actually enjoyed. And probably the only one he ever will, at this rate. And he sucked at it! He was objectively terrible.

He’s shocked when Eddie texts him the next evening. 

_I really wanna see you again, Rich_.

He takes a while to answer, although he really wants to see Eddie too. _I’m free for coffee on Saturday afternoon_.

_I was hoping for dinner again, on Friday_.

Really. _Why_ , Richie types and then deletes. Had Eddie run out of men to date in New York? Or maybe he was still dating other men, and just thought it would be fun to go to dinner with his old friend after realizing they didn’t have any chemistry that way.

Fuck, Richie knows no matter what Eddie wants to do, he’ll say yes.

_Okay, dinner. Friday._

_The place I’m thinking of isn’t far from you. Tell me your address and we can walk from there_.

Huh. _Okay_. And Richie sends Eddie his address.

_I’ll be by at 7_.

_See you then_.

Okay. Fine. They’re still good friends, best friends; Eddie probably wants to continue to be friends. It’s not unknown for friends to meet up on Friday nights to go to dinner, walking there from where one of them lives. It’s fine. Richie failed the kissing test, so, fine, and the fucking thing of it is, he’d absolutely go on weird friend dates or whatever with Eddie just to be near him. Shit, it was probably for the best that he’d failed the kissing test, because now there won’t be any further tests like that for him to fail, and therefore nothing to explain. Just fun dinners with Eddie. Where he’d get to talk to him… and hear about the men he was dating. The men he was fucking, even if Eddie spared him the details.

Jesus Christ. He literally can’t think about _Eddie being in bed with other men_. He can’t really think about Eddie being in bed with _him_ , either, but at least that would be fantasy. Eddie really is having sex with other men. And it sucks because that would be fucking God-tier spank-bank material except for the fact that Richie kind of wants to die at the thought of it.

The place Eddie suggests is more casual than the one they’d gone to before. So this time, as he waits for Eddie, he just puts on regular pants, a t-shirt, and a bomber jacket. No blazer this time. He’s relieved it’s all more casual; that makes it less likely this is a capital-D Date. Eddie’s dressed nicer than he is, but that’s usually the case anyway, and he’s not in a suit or anything. 

He doesn’t ask Eddie in, because there’s no need. Eddie looks pleased to see him, and God knows Richie’s pleased to see Eddie. It’s all weird, yeah, but he barely even cares, because it’s Quality Time with Eddie. 

Richie pays for his own at the counter so there’s no weirdness about who’s paying for who. And again he jokes and teases, and again Eddie reacts to him, and he gets to look at Eddie, and they’re in the restaurant way longer than anyone else and Richie almost forgets about how dates usually end until they’re leaving the restaurant and walking back to his place. But this isn’t a date, right? It’s just two friends at dinner. Right? 

At his door, Richie stops, and doesn’t unlock it yet. He would kill someone to be allowed, legitimately allowed, like a normal guy would be with the guy he’s actually dating, to invite Eddie in, pull him onto the couch, make out with him, take him to his bed and spend the night with him and wake up with him for more. He wants that so much he aches with it. 

Instead, he says “This is me,” which, _no shit, he knows where you live, asshole_. 

Busy cringing inside, he’s not prepared for it at all when Eddie puts his palm to his chest and presses him back against his door, his hand curling to take hold of his shirt and pull him down again as he gets on his tiptoes again to kiss him, and this time to press his body against Richie’s. 

Richie sucks in a breath, which parts his lips, and fuck, he wants to make this contact last as long as he can, greedy for it, no idea what he’s doing or what Eddie’s point is, but he freezes up as Eddie’s tongue slides into his mouth again, because he can’t believe it’s happening again and Eddie’s body is pressed up against him and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He can’t even move his hands.

_Fuck_.

Eddie steps back, breaking the kiss and lowering his heels to just stand in front of Richie, their bodies not touching anywhere and Richie excruciatingly aware of every molecule between them. Eddie looks kind of hurt. _Shit_.

“Sorry,” Richie says, and tries to smile. “Too much chili garlic sauce in my hot and sour soup.” He makes a face. “‘Night, Eddie.” He fumbles in his pocket for his key, turns and unlocks his door. 

When he sits down on the couch in his dark apartment, he rubs his hands over his face, not caring how that dislodges his glasses. “Fuck,” he breathes. _Why is Eddie doing this to him?_

But Eddie texts him again, a few days later, and like nothing weird has happened Eddie suggests coming over to Richie’s on Saturday and watching a movie—he suggests one Richie had mentioned to him but which neither of them had seen yet. And fuck him, Richie says yes. Eddie suggests bringing a pretentious beer he knows Richie likes, and Richie says sure. 

_Fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :O


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie comes over to Richie's, to watch a movie... or whatever. ...Is this a date?!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the start of that explicit content, at long last. Thank you for your patience ;)

Part of Richie is asking why Eddie’s doing this to him, and part of him is asking why he’s doing this to himself by letting it happen. But maybe this time it really isn’t a date and Eddie has finally learned that Richie can’t be what he wants, and it won’t end in Eddie trying to get him to kiss him back. He’s sure part of him will die inside when Eddie leaves without trying anything, but it’s worth it to fucking be around him. 

A little voice in his mind is wondering if he shouldn’t at least consider cutting ties again, since it’s killing him now in a similar way to how it did in high school being around Eddie without being able to actually have him, but then again, this is so close that it almost counts, right? 

And anyway he can’t make himself give up Eddie again, not yet.

Eddie comes over in a white shirt and jeans, and he might as well have slapped Richie in the face, because that’s either an extremely casual outfit appropriate for a meetup between friends or the choice of someone trying to appeal to him directly. Not that it would matter what Eddie wore, honestly, but this isn’t making things any easier. Richie’s in jeans too, and an old CBGB shirt, but he’s at home, after all, so there’s no need to dress up.

Eddie brought the beer, and the movie, because they’re old and still like to watch stuff on disc (it feels more real, they agree). There’s no mention of their two previous dates, or whatever they were. Eddie seems like he’s right where he belongs in Richie’s apartment, and he seems comfortable here, too. They stand in the kitchen and talk about Instant Pots and air fryers and whether they’re worth buying (Eddie has done a truly disturbing amount of research and is practically a walking _Consumer Reports_ ), and local markets, and even wine. God, they’re such old men now.

He could get used to this, leaning on the kitchen counter drinking a beer with a hand in his pocket, talking about any old shit that comes up, with Eddie. His best friend. It’s just like it was before, but there’s nothing really in their way now, at least not of them being friends. And fuck, it’s just good to have Eddie here, in his apartment. Even if Eddie doesn’t live here with him and they’re not going to go back to his, _their_ , bedroom… yeah, he better stop even considering that shit, he’s just going to fuck himself up. It’s enough to just have Eddie here.

Finally they decide they might as well watch the movie, and Richie feels a prickle of nervousness now as they go back to the couch. But hey, yeah, they’re just going to be on the same couch. It’s nothing. 

He puts the movie in, so Eddie can sit down first. Eddie sits close to the middle but not right in the center, so okay, he tries to sit the same distance away from the center on the other side, inwardly rolling his eyes at how ridiculous he’s being. Eddie can’t possibly care how close or not he sits. And yeah, anyway, short of actually touching him which is not happening, any distance is going to suck, at least for him.

It’s a good movie, one he’d been meaning to see, and it sucks ass that he can’t give it the attention it deserves because he’s so aware of Eddie being next to him. Eddie, for his part, doesn’t seem to have the same problem; he seems pretty engaged with it, and Richie tries to pay attention so he can respond to Eddie’s asides and remarks. Sure, he’s just here on his couch with his best friend and they’re watching a movie. It’s fine.

For all his focus on Eddie, when the credits start to roll and he’s just about to get up to take out the disc, he’s still completely and utterly surprised to suddenly have a lapful of him.

“Eddie— What— Mmph—”

Eddie fucking Kaspbrak is a warm weight in his lap, straddling his hips and aggressively kissing him, faint stubble scraping his lips. Then, he’s trying to pull off Richie’s shirt, and Richie almost automatically raises his arms in compliance before he just tears himself away from Eddie’s mouth and gasps out, “Eddie! What the fuck, man!” 

Eddie’s eyes are huge, and he suddenly looks… mortified. “Holy shit, man, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just—” He stops, stares at the ceiling, blinks and then says, “I just don’t fucking get you, Richie, I don’t understand you, and I hate that I can't.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Why do you keep accepting invitations from me, going on dates with me, if you don’t actually want to? Why don’t you want me to kiss you? Fuck.” Eddie covers his mouth with his fist for a moment, pressing it, looking wildly frustrated.

“Don’t want you to kiss me?” Richie repeats, baffled. Eddie is still very much in his lap.

“Yeah! You obviously don’t like it but you don’t stop me, you keep going out with me— What is it, what am I doing wrong? Why won’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

“Fuck,” Richie groans, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fuck. I knew this was going to happen. _Fuck_. Okay.”

“What? What? Are you not— are you asexual or whatever, are you, are you homophobic, maybe—”

“No! Eddie, I’m not, I’m not asexual, I’m not homophobic—”

“Are you sure, because when I came out to you you did seem kind of weirded out—”

“Because— Look, Eddie. I need to explain to you, but… it’s going to be really difficult for me, okay? Can I just…. Can you just listen, okay, because it’s going to be a lot.”

Eddie nods, almost frantic. “Yeah, sure, Rich, you can tell me whatever, I just… want to know what’s going on, what I did.”

 _What he did_. Richie groans again. “You didn’t do anything, okay? Please believe me. You’re perfect. I mean it.”

“Then what—”

“Look, Eddie, shut up for a second.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

“Okay, so.” He can’t look directly at Eddie, not in his eyes. He almost takes his glasses off, so he won’t look at him accidentally, but he doesn’t. “I didn’t… kiss anybody until I was in college.” He feels his neck getting hot. “And that was a girl, and I don’t even remember who it was. And there were some other girls, and a dude kissed me, but nothing other than that. I moved to fucking New York, and I didn’t date anybody there. Nobody was interested, I couldn’t get anonymous sex in fucking New York fucking City. I made a drunken pass at my manager but he turned me down, thank God. After I turned thirty, when I went out to LA, I went on one date with a guy out there, and that didn’t go anywhere and I… froze up when he kissed me, and then… I turned forty, and then I saw you again and you told me to go out with some guys, but I didn’t, so nothing happened with that, either— Jesus Christ when I list it all out like that—” It takes a lot out of him to say it, and it takes almost no time.

Eddie’s still in his lap and he still can’t look at him. When Eddie touches his jaw, he closes his eyes and desperately wills himself not to fucking cry. Here comes the pity he’d been dreading. Oh well, maybe it’ll be a relief to finally get it all over with. “What are you saying?” Eddie asks, voice soft.

“Shit, do I have to spell it out for you, I mean—” _Please, don’t make me go on_ , he thinks.

“No, I just— So you’ve kissed, you’ve gone out on dates, but you haven’t—”

Richie opens his eyes, and swallows, and looks directly at Eddie when he says, voice thick and one corner of his mouth wryly turned up, “Nothin’ under the clothes, man.” There. There it is. 

“Richie.” Getting it, Eddie just looks at him, _still_ in his lap.

Richie feels completely exhausted. “It’s fine, you can leave. It won’t bother me,” he says, sounding toneless to himself.

“Why would I leave?”

“Uh, because I’m a gigantic fucking arrested development pathetic middle-aged dork you don’t need to waste your time on? I can add things to that list, if you want.”

“Richie.” Eddie holds Richie’s face in his hands. “God, you have no fucking idea, do you.”

“Apparently not. Care to clue me in?”

"Rich. Do you know how I knew I was gay?"

"No? Of course not. How the fuck would I know?" Richie knows he sounds tired and petulant. Eddie doesn’t seem to mind.

"I knew I was gay because I wasn't interested in anyone else but you. Did you notice I didn't go out with girls in high school?"

Richie pauses. Truth be told, he hadn’t realized that. He’d been too focused on himself, on trying not to look like he was too interested in Eddie, or any other guy. "...No? But wouldn't that have been because of your mom?" Eddie was cute enough to get girls, God knows.

"Rich, if I wanted to go out with a girl, I would have, no matter what my mom said."

Richie knows this is true, and thank God Eddie apparently hadn’t wanted to, because that would have absolutely killed him to watch.

"So why'd you get married to... a woman?" He knows nothing about Eddie’s ex-wife, and he’s fine with that. He’s never asked and Eddie has never told.

"I hadn’t fully realized what was going on with myself yet. I thought I could try to be... normal. I thought I could do okay, with that arrangement. You weren't in my life anymore, I figured if you could forget me, I could forget you, too."

“I never forgot you,” Richie says, and he has to swallow hard to keep down a sob. 

"Rich, when you stopped talking to me, we stopped doing stuff together, I didn't know what to do.”

“I stopped talking to you because I didn’t want you to know… to figure out how I felt about you. I didn’t want anybody to know.”

“What does that mean? How did you feel about me?”

Richie sniffles, and laughs. “Jesus, you couldn’t tell? I felt like I practically was wearing a sign that said _I Love Eddie Kaspbrak_. Every time those dickweeds called me… you know, called me names and beat me up and shit, I was afraid they could see the sign. ...Fuck!” he exclaims, remembering, “I kinda did make a sign, I carved our initials in the fucking Kissing Bridge, dude.”

“You did?” Eddie raises his brow considering that, and nods slowly, clearly impressed. Inside current Richie, teenage Richie burns and blazes with long-delayed pride. “You… liked me that way.” Going unspoken under the childlike phrasing is the fact that Richie just said he felt like he'd been wearing a sign that said _I Love Eddie Kaspbrak_. Mercifully, and somehow appropriately, they're speaking in the pubescent language of _Do you like me? Check yes or no_.

Richie swallows again. Now he can look directly into Eddie’s eyes and admit it, pass back the metaphorical folded notebook paper with a big checkmark next to _Yes_ , and a heart drawn next to it. “Yeah. I did. I do.”

Eddie looks at him a long time, then narrows his eyes and tilts his head. Richie braces himself. “Is that why you made all those jokes about fucking my mom?”

“Uh.” Richie tilts his head, considering. “Interesting point, Eds, but I was mostly trying to get your goat.”

“Freud would have a field day with you,” Eddie says. “I think I knew you felt… some way about me, but I just decided you liked annoying me.”

“Yeah, did the multiple times I called you ‘cute’ and not anyone else clue you in at all? I never let you be in that hammock by yourself?”

“I just thought you were teasing me, Rich. I didn’t think you meant it. You were always joking.”

“I was teasing you,” Richie sighs, unable to resist a huffing little laugh,”and I actually meant it. I was pulling your pigtails, man. Pinching your adorable little cheeks.” The last, he’d done literally, on multiple occasions, despite Eddie’s protests. If Eddie had had pigtails, he knows he’d have pulled them. “I could say all that shit and everyone would think I was kidding. I loved annoying you because you’d still give me attention, but no one would suspect I… liked you that way.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t put two and two together.” Eddie’s shoulders slump a little. “I noticed we were together a lot, obviously, and we… liked to be close to each other, but I was in denial about what my feelings for you really were, and I assumed I shouldn't think or talk about it. When you started turning me down, I was afraid you suspected something about _me_ and that’s why you were backing off, and then we weren’t hanging out at all. I hadn’t understood then that I was gay anyway, so I just thought I should try to accept that you didn’t want to see me anymore and move on, but….”

“Nope. Didn’t suspect a fucking thing.” Richie shakes his head. “I assumed you wouldn’t want anything to do with me or would just feel sorry for me if you knew. I didn’t want you to be angry with me, or think I was weird or gross….” Richie closes his eyes for a moment, pictures two guys holding hands as they walk over the Kissing Bridge, unaware of their being stalked like deer by a pack of wolves. He pictures bloodied faces, swollen black eyes, teeth on the ground. He swallows again. “I didn’t want anyone to... hurt you because of me. So I had to— I had to make myself stop going places with you. I fucking hated it but I had to do it.”

“Fuck, Richie. I've missed you so bad this whole time. When I got to see you, I hoped we could pick up like before, but you could be so weird and standoffish sometimes—”

“Because I didn’t want to fucking have this conversation—”

“—I assumed you weren’t interested, but you still kept going out with me and you kinda seemed like you _were_ interested. I didn’t know what the hell was going on but I wanted to keep seeing you, even if you only wanted to be friends, but....”

Richie sighs, and it’s watery. He feels stripped raw, a finality to it as he admits, “I don’t think it’s possible for me to be more interested in you. Pretty much only you. That’s probably why I fucking never really tried with, like, _anyone_ else.” He realizes something, and blinks. “Wait a fucking second. Did you say I was the only person you were interested in?”

“Yes?” Eddie raises his brow. “Did that take a minute to hit you, or something?”

“I guess so, man. Fuck. ...Why?”

Eddie blinks. “Well, think about it, Rich. There was no one in my life like you. You’re smart, you’re funny….”

Richie nods. “Yeah, that checks out so far….”

“Rich, you _listened_ to me. Yeah, our other friends did, and God knows my mother _didn’t_ , but _you_ really cared about what I thought, what I did. I mean, yeah, you’d mess with me, but you made me… _make_ me… feel like myself.” He points at his chest, making sure Richie doesn’t break their locked gaze. “Whenever I was with you, I felt like I was _me_. My own person.”

“And here I just thought I annoyed the ever-loving shit out of you,” Richie remarks, somewhat faintly.

Eddie smiles. “You did. You do. Like no one else. But you made me feel brave, Richie. You’d always encourage me to do stuff I wanted to do that I was scared of, and every time I’ve needed to do something major I’ve remembered that. When I was anxious, you might have distracted me with some shitty joke, but you always gave me that push I needed, even if you were just daring me. When I told my mother I was going out of state for college, I was fucking terrified, but I did it. When I told Myr— When I told my ex-wife I was gay, when I told her I wanted a divorce, I thought, _Richie would tell me I was brave. If Richie were here, he’d say I could do this_.”

Fuck. Richie aches thinking about Eddie gearing up for all that seriously major shit alone without Richie at his side, with just ghosts of Richie’s dopey pep talks and jokes in his mind. No hand to hold while he steeled himself. “You… Eds, that’s so fucking brave, how did you—”

“I saw you on TV,” Eddie says, “and then I looked you up on YouTube, and… I watched everything I could, I couldn’t stop, and I realized I still had feelings for you. Like… everything came back, and I missed you so much. And I just…. It was just so escapist for me. Like even with all the shit you were talking about in your act, I seriously just… kept thinking about you, like, all the fucking time. I was more emotionally involved in that than in my own actual life. I kept wanting to look you up and reach out to you, but I’d get scared because I remembered how you pushed me away in high school. I thought you wouldn’t want to hear from me, but I kept thinking about it. I was so unhappy in every other way but I kept reminding myself that you wouldn’t be interested. I felt so trapped—I worked myself into a panic attack one day, so I went to the doctor. My usual doctor wasn’t there, so I saw another one, and she told me I didn’t have asthma, and probably not half the shit I thought I had. Mr. Keene tried to tell me that once, that my mother was trying to convince me I was sick, but that scared me too much so I didn’t want to listen. But my new doctor suggested I get on anti-anxiety meds and go to therapy.”

All Richie can say to all of that is, “My act sent you into therapy?!”

“Your act made me realize I wasn’t sick, made me go to therapy, accept that I was gay, and made me divorce my wife.”

“Shit.” Eddie’s hand is now flat over his breastbone, and Richie takes it in both of his own for just a moment, squeezing it. “I was obsessed with you all this time, and—”

“I was obsessed with you, too.” Eddie leans in, and when he speaks again his voice is low and intimate. “So it’s not that you didn’t want me to kiss you? It’s that….”

“...I didn’t know what to do when you did.”

“Mm. Okay. So if I kissed you again now, and you knew I wouldn’t be judging you, would that be okay?”

“Yeah,” Richie finds himself whispering. Then Eddie just… _brushes_ his lips over Richie’s, and it’s by far the sexiest thing that’s happened to him in his life, accounting of course for the fact that there’s not much competition. Richie shivers. Eddie does it again, their lips clinging, and then presses his mouth firmly to Richie’s. Eddie cups his face again, like he’s holding him gently in place, and when Richie finally has to draw a breath, Eddie slants his mouth against Richie’s on his inhale and slides his tongue in. 

Richie puts his hands hesitantly on Eddie’s sides, and at the hum of approval he gets, keeps them there. But he wants to touch Eddie’s skin (he suddenly remembers those warm days in their stuffy clubhouse, he and Eddie sharing that hammock with Eddie sprawled over him, that time his hand curved lightly around Eddie’s leg as they read comics and squabbled), and puts his hands up under that fucking white t-shirt, as Eddie starts to kiss him with the same aggression he had when he’d gotten on his lap, only with surety now, too. Another hum when Eddie feels his hands flat on his skin, and he can feel Eddie’s got goosebumps. 

There’s no way to respond to Eddie’s aggression but in kind—there’s a weird logic to it, and soon he’s lost in just doing this: being kissed by Eddie, kissing him back, touching his skin. It’s a new kind of conversation between them, and Richie is entranced as he navigates the brand new but deeply familiar language. He thinks he’s a fast learner here.

In high school, he would have killed to have done this, just this, making out on his couch like teenagers. Just having Eddie in his lap would have been enough. God, having Eddie on his lap would have killed him. What a way to go.

Eddie’s then suddenly kissing down his jaw, his neck, and Richie slumps back against the couch under the attack. Biting, sucking kisses, and _fuck_ of course he’d had no idea his neck was this sensitive. He groans, and Eddie stops, raising his head.

“No, don’t stop—”

“It’s fine, you’re okay?”

“Yeah. God, yes.”

“Can I take your shirt off?” 

“Um.” Richie thinks. He goes to the gym, yeah, kinda, but he’s not exactly a beefcake. He’s not, say, _Ryan Reynolds_. But what the hell, it _is_ kind of dark in here, and it’s Eddie, like he could say no to Eddie. “Sure?” 

Eddie tugs at his shirt again, and he sits up and lets him pull it off, almost knocking his glasses off in the process. Eddie looks him over.

“Sorry?” Richie offers.

Eddie literally _growls_ , before nipping again at his neck, kissing his collarbone, licking the hollow of his throat, even kissing all over his shoulders.

“Eddie, Jesus,” he gasps out.

“So, Richie,” Eddie says, breathless, “you've never gotten a handjob?”

Richie swallows hard, and shakes his head. “No. All self-serve, here.”

Eddie’s sitting up to pull off his own shirt, and he’s lean and perfect, Richie can tell that much in the light of the endlessly repeating movie menu. But the important thing is, he’s Eddie. “And no one’s ever sucked your dick?”

Richie’s brain is about to go offline. “No!”

“And no one’s ever fucked you?” Eddie’s shifting his weight back, and going for Richie’s fly, now.

“This is beginning to seem like cruel and unusual questioning. No, dude, okay?”

“Wow, this is unbelievable, this is amazing.” Richie hears his zipper lowering. Shit, he’s getting lightheaded.

“Dude, Eddie, I already know, okay, man? I'm already humiliated enough without you spelling it out how freakish it is, I thought we already went through this—”

“No, Rich, you don't understand.” Eddie gets his hand into Richie’s jeans then, fingers wrapping around his hard dick over his boxers. “I’m saying I can't believe I get to be the first person to do those things to you.”

Richie can only groan at that, a strangely quiet but heartfelt groan that seems to come from the very ground floor of his soul. No, the basement of his soul. No, the sub-basement. 

Eddie gives his cock a squeeze. “Am I going too fast for you, am I doing too much?”

“I mean, I want all of that shit, fuck, but as long as you don’t expect me to do all of it _tonight_ —”

“I don’t expect it, but I wouldn’t complain. But yeah, it probably would be too much.” Eddie leans in to kiss him again. “Your bed, I think. Let’s start with something more like what you’d be familiar with.” 

Richie’s bedroom is kind of a mess. “Uh, I wasn’t— I wasn’t expecting to have visitors. Like, ever,” he gets out between kisses. Eddie basically shoves him on the bed and gets his jeans off.

“Do you want to be completely naked for this?” Eddie asks him.

Richie blinks at him. “For what?”

Eddie works his right hand under the waistband of Richie’s boxers, to wrap around his cock. “For this.”

“Uh, yeah,” Richie gasps out. It’s funny, he’s never been naked in front of _anyone_ like this before, _for_ them, and a few blunt requests from Eddie Kaspbrak have him stripped down almost without hesitation. 

Like he’s being timed, Eddie gets Richie’s boxers off. 

“Socks too,” Richie finds himself saying. “Whenever they wear socks in porn it looks so stupid, like, hey asshole, why are you only wearing those stupid little socks—”

Eddie grins at him. “Richard. You watch gay porn?”

“Well yeah, of course, I mean, you know. Sometimes. Maybe a lot.”

Eddie laughs. “We’ll have to discuss _that_ later. I wouldn’t care if you wore only socks, by the way. But I think I prefer this.” Richie is naked, and Eddie is looking at him, without saying a word now. He’s _staring_ , actually. And the look in his eyes is exactly the one Richie’s always hoped to see, even if he’s never really thought about it before. “Richie,” he whispers finally, and stretches out next to him. He reaches out to touch his chest, and asks, “Do you want my clothes off too or is that too much?”

It _would_ be too much, and he _does_ want Eddie’s clothes off. “Uh, both?”

Eddie laughs again, and Richie raises up onto his elbows because he does not want to miss a fucking millisecond of Eddie taking the rest of his clothes off. Eddie rapidly unbuttons and unzips his jeans and shucks them off, yanks off his socks (Eddie Kaspbrak takes his shoes off at the door, thank you very much, _do you know how much dirt and germs you can track onto the carpet, seriously, Richie, take your shoes off, rent a steam cleaner sometime_ ), and he’s just wearing little boxer-briefs and he’s definitely hard. Hard for _him_ , Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier. 

Eddie knows Richie is watching him, and he stops with his fingers on his waistband. Very, very slowly he pulls it down.

“You fucking tease,” Richie accuses, trying to keep himself from blinking. “I wait all this time to see your—”

Eddie’s cock springs free, and there it is: Eddie Kaspbrak’s cock. Very beautiful, and very dark, and very hard. And it’s all for him. How sublime that the first cock he sees like this in person is Eddie’s.

Eddie sheds his underwear, and nudges his shoulder. “On your left side, please, c’mon.”

“Couldn’t we just— Like this?” Richie gestures at how the two of them are lying next to each other on their backs. 

“Yeah, but you’ll like this. Trust me.”

“But this isn’t fucking fair, I want to look at you.” Eddie Kaspbrak is naked for him and now he’s going to be behind him where he can’t see.

Eddie laughs softly. “There will be plenty of time for that, I think. C’mon.” Eddie puts his hand on Richie’s hip to direct him as Richie turns onto his left side. Eddie’s chin rests on his shoulder and his right hand wraps firmly around Richie’s cock again, no fabric separating Eddie’s warm bare palm from him now. 

“Ah,” Richie gasps out, getting it. “Finally getting some help with this. It’s about damn time.”

Eddie squeezes him, and gives him one stroke, and another. “This good?” he whispers, right in his ear, sending crackles along his nerves.

‘Yeah. Yes, it’s good,” Richie answers tightly, staring unblinking at Eddie’s small, strong hand wrapped around his oh-so-painfully hard cock. He’s tempted to put his own hand over Eddie’s, but he doesn’t want to block the view. He starts leaking over Eddie’s fingers, and swallows. “Jesus, Eddie.” He gasps out a sudden laugh. “My dick looks much bigger in _your_ hand.”

Eddie muffles a laugh against his neck and gives him a rebuking squeeze. “Shut up,” he whispers, and Richie shuts up, at least for the time being. Eddie starts out slow, until Richie can’t help shifting his hips; he goes faster, as Richie thrusts into his grip. 

“Eddie. Oh, Eddie, Eddie,” he whispers. He can’t stop looking at Eddie’s hand tight around him; he’s aware of Eddie curved around him, radiating heat, the sound of his breathing and his exhalations soft against Richie’s skin, the clean smell of his soap and his aftershave and a faint hint of fresh sweat, his erection pressed between their bodies.... It really doesn't take long until Richie starts to come, Eddie squeezing him through it, wringing it out of him. Richie watches himself spurt over Eddie’s fingers. “Fuck,” he breathes.

“Yeah?” Eddie says, lips against his skin, his nose in Richie’s hair. His voice sounds shaky, and his breathing is a little fast. “Jesus Christ, Richie,” he mutters, low and intense, “I can’t believe I’m the first person, the only person who’s touched you like this or seen you like this.” He presses a kiss to the skin just under Richie’s hairline.

Richie drags in a shaky breath. “Shit, when you say it like that, it sounds like a good thing.”

“It _is_ a good thing,” Eddie returns, fierce, nipping at the skin over the join between Richie’s neck and shoulder; that sends a jolt directly to his spent cock still in Eddie’s hand, and he almost misses his next words. “Don’t downplay this, Rich. I figured when I heard you were a comedian, you were out in the big city, getting gigs, going to LA, meeting all kinds of people, and your fucking act all about all this sex you were having… with women. God—” he adds, rolling onto his back as he releases Richie’s cock. Richie turns to watch him wrap his hand around himself and rapidly stroke. Richie knows Eddie’s kind of a clean freak, but he guesses if he already has Richie’s come on his hand, he might as well… use it for lube. _Fuck_ , that’s hot.

Fuck, it’s all hot. Eddie Kaspbrak is naked for him, his body sleekly muscled and compact like a runner’s, beautiful olive-tanned skin kissed with sun and freckles, dusted with black hair, face flushed, sweat at his temples, hair starting to curl at the ends, his hand tight around his cock. 

And the fucking _look_ in his big dark eyes.

“Man, I really, really wanna help you with that,” Richie croaks, “you know, return the favor, but I don’t think I can move my arms right now.”

But Eddie’s busy ranting. “—And you’re so fucking— You have no fucking idea how hot you are, holy shit, Richie. When I saw you in Derry—” 

Richie blinks a few times. “‘Hot’? I’m hot?”

“Fuck, yes, okay? Does it not look like I think you’re hot?”

“I mean, the dick doesn’t lie, but maybe you just have shitty taste—”

“Fuck you. You’re… you’re tall—”

“I’ve always been taller than you—”

“Yeah, but you filled out, Richie, your fucking _shoulders_. Your—your body hair—”

“My _body hair_?! Did you not get the memo? The Burt Reynolds thing is out, we’re all supposed to be waxed like Thor now.” Richie feels his face starting to burn. Fucking _Eddie_ thinks _he’s_ hot?

“Richie,” Eddie gasps out. “Are you seriously arguing with me when I’m literally right here next to you jerking off over how hot you are.” The flush is spreading down to his neck and chest. 

“I mean, you clearly like it when I argue with you, dude.” 

Eddie’s starting to pant. “I’m serious, Richie. I’d get so sexually frustrated about you the past few weeks even at work, I wanted to break pencils but I couldn’t because nobody has pencils anymore and I didn’t want to go buy pencils just to break them—” He glides his thumb over the tip of his cock and shivers all over, hips tilting upward as he fucks into his fist.

Richie stares, mouth dry. “Oh, sorry, you’re right, dudes jerking off in front of me are constantly telling me how hot I am and how sexually frustrated they get over me to where they want to pointlessly destroy office supplies, it’s not a new experience for me or anything. I forgot.”

“Well, fucking start getting used to hearing it. I just— Fuck, Richie— I kept thinking about how you’d look, what you’d be like—”

Richie watches Eddie come over his fingers and his taut stomach, flushed red and gasping. It’s an electric moment, the type of thing he’s dreamed of seeing, but he can only say: 

“Jesus, it’s like 3-D porn.” 

“Shut up,” Eddie laughs, breathless.

“No, I’m serious. If I’d known sex would be so much like porn, I’d have done it a hell of a lot earlier.”

“Shut up, fuck!” Smiling, Eddie shifts to kiss him like he can’t ever stop and doesn’t want to. But he does, he has to in order to breathe. Even then Eddie keeps... nuzzling him. 

Eddie insists on getting up and getting something to wipe them off with, and it’s just as well since Richie is kind of worn out and doesn’t want to move. Watching Eddie get up—

God, Eddie naked from behind…. Richie wants to lick literally every inch of his body and imagines renting a sky banner declaring exactly that with their full names, imagines standing on some beach with Eddie with it flying overhead as he beams up proudly at it, pointing, as Eddie waves his hands frantically in charmed embarrassment and pretend outrage. Nah, he’s nowhere near being comfortable with anything like that yet, but the thought makes him grin.

He realizes there would be something inherently hilarious in switching his longtime act without warning from being about leering at women to openly lusting after men, specifically his… Eddie, but he’s pretty sure a good long hiatus is in order first.

Richie tells him where to find washcloths. “Again, I gotta warn you, I wasn’t expecting visitors,” he calls after him.

“You didn’t think I might have to pee when I was over here watching a movie?” Eddie says from the hallway. “Turned it off, by the way. The menu was still playing.” The water in the bathroom sink runs, and stops, and Eddie returns, giving Richie another chance to stare at him naked. “I won’t say anything specific about the state of your bathroom. Now is not the time,” he says. He’s cleaned up, and now he wipes off Richie’s stomach, his cock. He’s gentle, but thorough. “You good?” he asks, meeting Richie’s eyes, brows raised. He means it, of course, and the simple fact of Eddie caring for him, about him, makes his eyes a little wet.

Richie had spent years trying to hide from Eddie (and everyone else) the true nature of his affection for him. He’d missed him for decades, had tried not to think about him and failed. When they met again, he’d assumed Eddie couldn’t be interested in him that way, and when it was clear he was, Richie thought Eddie wouldn’t understand or want to bother with his pathetic history. 

He’s been wrong on so many counts now that he’s lost track, and it's fucking great.

He's lying naked on his bed, Eddie's naked and has just finished cleaning them off because Eddie, the man he’s loved since the beginning, the boy who was the start of all things, just made him come and then Richie watched him come because of him, and it was all like it was no big deal—well, no, it was a huge deal, but Eddie's just being normal with him, like this is nothing out of the ordinary for him, like it’s all part of the same thing when it comes to Richie, so it's kind of not a big deal at the same time. 

And Eddie’s more or less promised him that there’s more where that came from. 

This, all this, could really fucking be his now. It maybe had missed him before, but it would be his now. 

It was going to be his.

“Yeah, Eddie. I’m good,” he answers, holding out a hand to pull Eddie back into bed. When Eddie takes it, Richie smiles more widely than he can remember doing in a very long time, and Eddie squeezes his hand tightly and smiles sweetly back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *high-fives Richie* And here we go.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is an appointment in the calendar in Richie’s phone for tonight that says “BJ.”

There is an appointment in the calendar in Richie’s phone for tonight that says “BJ.”

That’s Eddie’s term, of course; Eddie sent him the invitation. Richie would have been more explicit. Richie would have said “Eddie Kaspbrak: sucking Richie Tozier’s brain out through his dick.” Because he’s sure that’s how it’s gonna go.

Eddie claims to not be very good at giving head because he hasn’t done it often, but Richie figures he’s just being modest. He knows the amount of research Eddie will have put into this evening, although he’s not sure he’ll deserve the effort, because Eddie Kaspbrak’s mouth on his cock, or anywhere near his cock, is going to get him off. It’s possible that anyone’s mouth on his cock would do it for him pretty quickly, but not necessarily true, and besides, it’s moot anyway because it’ll be Eddie’s.

Eddie brings takeout and some wine. “The wine was not necessary,” Richie tells him. 

Eddie shrugs. “I know. I wanted to bring it. It’s a good wine.”

Richie’s definitely nervous, and he’s already sweating. He finishes eating first. His hands clasped, fidgeting with his fingers and his elbows on the table, he watches Eddie finish up the crazy health food meal he’d gotten for himself with vegetables Richie had never heard of, and thinks, _In a few minutes the mouth I’m looking at will be on my dick_. He feels his face get hot; he’s starting to get hard.

“Richie,” Eddie says in a warning tone, apparently noticing his quietness and his staring. “Be patient.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve waited this many years, and so on. God, I can’t believe you set up an appointment for this. You fucking nerd.”

“I like planning,” Eddie defends, eating a forkful of green vegetables. “Besides, you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy accepting that invitation and staring at it on your calendar.”

Richie flips him off.

Eddie flashes his dimples. “Keep it up, Rich, I can always cancel on you.”

“Oh I’m keeping it up, all right,” Richie says, shifting restlessly, a bundle of nerves.

Chuckling, Eddie shakes his head. “Don’t be so nervous.”

“I’m not nerv—”

“It’s not a big deal. You’ll see. You’ll enjoy it, but don’t build it up so much in your mind.”

Richie sighs. “Easy for you to say.” 

Eddie frowns. “It’s not, actually. I mean, I know I’m telling you it’s not a big deal, but that’s because I know that myself now after many therapy sessions and actually having it done to me and doing it. It was not easy, Rich, to get to this headspace. I’m just telling you not to freak out.”

Richie closes his eyes for a moment, and leans forward a little, pressing his upper lip against his knuckles. “Look, I haven’t done this before. You gotta… be forgiving. Lower your standards. Expect nothing.”

Eddie laughs. “Richie. Come on, don’t be stupid. ...I don’t have any standards.”

“Fuck you!” Richie laughs back, throwing a balled-up napkin at him. “Hey, Eduardo. Spit or swallow?”

Eddie almost chokes on his last bite of vegetables, but he quickly recovers. “For you? Swallow all the way, baby,” he says, looking up at Richie through his lashes. “Every drop.”

Richie groans. “I swear to God, Eddie, if you don’t hurry up and finish eating—”

“Patience, Rich,” Eddie says, and licks his lips. “Go sit on the couch.”

“Whatever,” Richie says, but he goes, and sits in the middle of his couch. Eddie told him beforehand that he wanted to do this here, because first of all, he knows Richie will need to be sitting down, so up against a counter or a wall is out, at least this first time (Richie had to really pull his attention back after he started imagining Eddie blowing him in the kitchen, in the bathroom…). Second of all, he wants it to be somewhere Richie’s comfortable with. Richie thinks maybe, too, he wants Richie to look at this couch and associate it with this evening, although Richie’s already associating this couch with making out with Eddie as it is.

Finally, fucking finally, Eddie is done eating. He puts his dishes in the dishwasher and drinks some water. Richie sighs. Eddie takes his sweet fucking time coming in and kneeling down on the floor between Richie’s knees, his hands cupping them and sliding up his thighs. Eddie’s hands are hot through the denim of Richie’s jeans, and Richie blinks down at him, mouth dry.

Eddie looks into his eyes as he unbuttons his jeans, unzips his fly. He’s deliberate and almost slow. _Fucking tease_. Richie realizes he’s holding his breath and lets it out when Eddie’s hand reaches into the fly of his thin boxers. “Uh,” he says, strained, as Eddie’s hand wraps around him, lightly stroking, “you sure you don’t want me to take this off—”

“Yes,” Eddie says, quiet. “I like it like this.”

Eddie leans in, and with the flat of his tongue licks a long, slow, wet stripe from the base of Richie’s dick to the tip. Richie digs his fingers into the couch cushions. “ _Fuck_.” Eddie glides the tip of his tongue all around the head, all over every curve. Pulse pounding through his painfully hard cock, Richie watches a spurt of precome make an appearance, and watches it get swiped up by Eddie’s tongue.

“I need you to breathe, Rich,” Eddie murmurs, lips against his cock, a glint of amusement in his eyes, and Richie realizes he’s taking shallow, panting breaths. “Don’t pass out on me. I haven’t even sucked you yet.”

Then Eddie leans up, and takes him in. Richie slumps into the couch, closing his eyes for just a moment. He opens them to see Eddie Kaspbrak’s mouth around his cock, taking him deep, cheeks hollowing as he draws off, slow and tight and deliberate. He makes eye contact with Richie and Richie makes a strangled noise in his throat. 

As Eddie bobs slowly up and down, undoing him, Richie can’t keep still. He tilts his hips up to follow Eddie’s mouth; he tilts his head back with a shudder every time Eddie’s tongue dips into the tip; his fingers dig into the couch cushions, flexing. He can’t help his eyes fluttering closed for some of it, can’t help gasping. He mutters every curse word he knows under his breath. Eddie’s hand cups his balls and he whimpers. 

Eddie’s mouth is working around him now, while sucking him, and he’s not sure he can take this. He doesn’t know how he’ll survive. He can hear how high and rushed his breaths are. His hands scrabble blindly and restlessly knead the couch cushions until the hand that Eddie doesn’t have in his boxers reaches out and takes one of them, working his fingers between Richie’s and squeezing. They make eye contact again, and then Eddie takes him in so deep, throat working around him, that he comes then with a strangled cry, and comes and _fucking comes_ , down Eddie’s throat.

Eddie slowly pulls off, the sensation on Richie’s overly sensitized dick making him shudder, his fingers still laced with Eddie’s as Eddie sits back just a bit. “Jesus,” Eddie says. His face is flushed, his lips a little swollen, a little bit of spit and Richie’s come at the corners of his mouth. He’s absolutely gorgeous. “Fuck, that was hot.” His voice is a little raspy.

“No shit, you’re telling me,” Richie croaks, absolutely wrecked. He squeezes Eddie’s hand, and holds up a finger of the other one. “Gimme one second,” he manages to say. “Okay. Come here,” he says, and pulls Eddie toward him. Eddie over his lap, between his thighs, his arms on the back of the couch. Eddie kisses him—Jesus fuck, he’s tasting his own come in Eddie’s mouth, and his cock twitches weakly at the thought—as Richie with fumbling fingers hastily gets Eddie’s fly down and a hand in his shorts and on his cock. Eddie’s flatteringly hard and he groans into Richie’s mouth as Richie strokes him, fucking into his grip and messily kissing him until he comes, too, and they’re both panting, sweaty, come-sticky messes. Eddie sort of collapses onto him, and Richie wraps his arms around him. “Eddie,” he says against his temple, hushed like a prayer. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says back, muffled.

Richie immediately wants to return the favor. And at the same time, he’s completely terrified. Yeah. This is big. Getting your cock sucked is one thing. Sucking a cock is something else. At least, that’s what everybody says. He knows it’s stupid of him to think that even as he’s also absolutely positive he wants to do it, he wants to blow Eddie. God, even the thought of it gets him hot. 

It still takes him a few days to really psych himself up for it, and then one night after they’ve watched a movie at his place (they spend almost all their time together here), and gotten ready for bed, he says to Eddie, “Look, first of all. Just understand you’re probably going to have to tell me what to do,” and as he says it he realizes how fucking hot that’s almost certainly going to be, and wavers a little on his feet before getting on the floor (on the throw rug, to try and spare his knees). Eddie’s eyebrows shoot comically up his forehead before he hastily moves to sit at the side of the bed, over him. 

Eddie leans back on his hands; Richie takes his cock out through the fly of his sleep pants. He’s getting hard in Richie’s hand. And there it is, up close and personal. Inches from his mouth. _Richie Tozier is on his knees because he is going to suck Eddie Kaspbrak’s cock_. He pictures it scrawled in Sharpie on the wall of a bathroom somewhere. He waits to shock himself with the idea, to feel a flash of disgust, and he doesn’t. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

He touches the tip of his tongue to the head of Eddie’s cock, and Eddie hisses. Tentative at first, Richie licks him. He’s perfectly smooth against his tongue, except for the ridges and folds, and there’s a faint salt scent, a faint salt taste of his skin. Richie takes his time licking Eddie’s cock all over, and then even his balls a little bit just to get a reaction out of him. Eddie is breathing hard and cursing under his breath. “Breathe,” Richie tells him, and then he takes Eddie’s cock into his mouth. 

And there it is. He has a cock in his mouth. 

Eddie spurts a little, and Richie closes his eyes for a second at how hot that is, feeling the salt drip of it down his throat. He takes Eddie in as far as he thinks he can right now—he doesn’t want to gag, that’d be pretty embarrassing—and draws off, slow like Eddie had, and risks a glance up at him. 

Eddie’s face is red, his eyes are wide and almost black, and his lips are parted as he stares at Richie. Satisfied enough with that, Richie takes him in again. And draws almost all the way off. And takes him in again, lips tight. “Oh, fuck, Rich, that’s good, like that, keep doing that,” Eddie tells him, voice strained and low.

He does. He, Richie Tozier, is sucking cock. The graffiti someone told him was scrawled in Sharpie on the wall of the girls’ bathroom at school is now, finally, technically correct. And the world isn’t ending.

Richie frames Eddie’s narrow hips in his hands, and it seems Eddie really likes that, his hips jumping up a bit against the hold, his cock giving a little leap in Richie’s mouth, leaking more. “Sorry,” Eddie gasps out. Richie hums in reply, and Eddie shivers. And Richie keeps sucking his cock.

“When you,” Eddie gets out, “when you have me as deep in as you can,” and Richie feels himself going hot all over, “hold me there longer before you pull back,” and Richie does it that way immediately starting now. Eddie groans softly in time with it, moving his hips, and then… and then Eddie puts a hand in his hair, curling his fingers in it and maybe pulling a little, almost directing him as he goes, and Richie makes a sound in his throat, having to close his eyes. 

Richie keeps going just like that, because fuck, he’s this close to making Eddie come with his mouth. Eddie’s going to _come in his mouth_. 

“Fuck, fuck, okay, Rich, I’m gonna—” Richie’s heartrate ticks up as Eddie’s hand clenches in his hair, his hips bucking up against Richie’s hold as he comes in Richie’s mouth. Richie isn’t practiced enough to hold it all in and neatly swallow the slightly salty warmth down, but hey, he tries. “Oh, fuck, Richie,” Eddie moans. 

Richie draws off, aware of the fact that Eddie’s come is on his lips, on his chin. Eddie is staring at him, fingers still in his hair, looking stunned. 

So it seems Richie not only sucks cock, he’s not terrible at it, _and_ he likes it. Okay. Yes. 

Eddie is staring at him, but it’s in awe, and Richie doesn’t care that he looks like a man who has just sucked a dick. He doesn’t care because it’s Eddie. His chest feels full with some unnameable emotion or three.

“So Professor, am I gonna pass this semester?” Richie asks, batting his lashes.

“Flying colors,” Eddie answers, flushed and a little breathless. “God— I used to— When I saw you, like on YouTube, I’d almost let myself think about you doing that.”

“Yeah?” Richie rubs a hand slowly up and down Eddie’s thigh, which is still trembling as he comes down. “Almost?”

“Yeah, I mean, I usually wouldn’t let myself think about you that way,” Eddie says. “This was before therapy. But fuck, Richie, I couldn’t stop staring at you, like, sometimes I was barely even paying attention to what you were saying—”

Richie guffaws. “Oh, good. That was probably for the best, huh?”

“—I was just obsessed with how you looked grown up but how you were still the same, I kept fantasizing about seeing you again, what I wanted to do with you even though I didn’t know shit about shit.” Eddie traces the pad of his thumb along Richie’s still-slick lower lip, staring at it, eyes filled with longing, or the memories of it. He sighs. “Just the thought of spending time with you again, talking to you—I just _wanted_ you. By the time I saw you in Derry, I thought I was over that, but—”

“Fuck, Eddie.” Richie stands up, holds Eddie’s head in his hands, and leans down to kiss him. Eddie meets it with a soft hungry sound, one hand going to curl over Richie’s wrist. Richie lets Eddie taste himself in his mouth, until Eddie pulls him forward, over him, Eddie sinking into the bed, Richie moving his hands to the bed on either side of him and getting a knee between his thighs. Between them, Eddie slips a hand into his sleep pants and he doesn’t even need a good grip on him to have him coming that way and gasping into a kiss that suddenly turns desperate for both of them. 

Eddie wraps his arms around him, pulling him down to rest his face in the warm crook of Eddie’s neck as they breathe each other in. He wants to fall asleep like that and almost does, but he knows he’s too heavy, and Eddie nudges him awake. He has to put on clean pants, but as soon as he’s back in bed Eddie wraps around him, pressing himself to Richie’s back. 

Sleeping in the same bed as another person is still new to Richie—he doesn’t think the times the Losers, including Eddie, slept over or when he slept at theirs really count when it comes to this—but with Eddie at least it feels natural and has every time they’ve done it. As Eddie tightens an arm over him, he thinks he doesn’t want to be anywhere else, and he doesn’t want Eddie to be anywhere else, either.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One morning Eddie, his face smushed into Richie’s neck and Richie’s arm over his back, murmurs against his skin, “Rich, you want to get fucked?”

It may have been a long time coming, but Richie thinks he might have taken to dick like a duck takes to water. Or at least to Eddie’s dick. 

He and Eddie make out like teenagers, appropriately enough, or as close as they can get, as if making up for lost time. Eddie in his lap on the couch, kissing his neck and grinding on him and driving him crazy until Richie begs him to make him come. Sleepy lazy hot morning handjobs. Eddie surprising him by blowing him against the counter in the bathroom after his run and Richie’s shower. Richie sucking Eddie off again as he sits on the bed, attuning himself to what Eddie likes, his tells: what particular stroke of his tongue over the head of his cock makes Eddie’s breath hitch, what makes him restlessly curl and uncurl his fingers in Richie’s hair, the confirmation that Richie laving his balls with his tongue and taking them into his mouth makes him curse and gasp. He learns Eddie is a biter, and Eddie discovers Richie’s nipples are sensitive—that’s a fun day. 

He loves every second of it, and he knows it’s boiled over somewhat into how they are in public: holding hands, a little shy about it, keeping an eye on the people around them, but keeping each other close, squeezing each other’s fingers. Richie likes to draw Eddie against his body when they’re in line somewhere or on the subway, paradoxically protected by the anonymity of the crowd, or so it feels. He lets himself drop a kiss to Eddie’s lips when he’s not expecting it, watching the creases and frowns of worry drop away from his face to be replaced with a flash of surprised happiness.

Richie’s sure he wouldn’t be so enthusiastic if it weren’t Eddie he was doing all this with. He’s greedy for Eddie, for touching him, for kissing him after years of deprivation. He now gets to rest his hand in the small of Eddie’s back, press his thumbs into the twin ridges framing his abs, nuzzle the wiry hairs beneath his navel, kiss his way along Eddie’s collarbones, taste his mouth, taste his cock. He can see how Eddie’s eyes get darker with want, the way his neck gets red before he comes, hear the soft sounds he makes and the way he breathes. It’s all there for Richie now, just about whenever he wants it. It’s overwhelming, but it keeps him from focusing overmuch on the fact that Eddie can see those things about him as well. 

“You’ve seen my O face and lived, dude,” Richie says to him once. “Although please don’t tell the tale.” Eddie just kisses his shoulder (Richie’s shoulders apparently really do it for him).

Another time, sated and sweaty, as Eddie kisses his way back up his chest, Richie says, “I think sometimes I kind of hate that I wasn’t your first for these things, too.” He bites his lip for a second, unsure if he should have admitted that.

Eddie presses a firm kiss to his mouth. “Rich, look at it this way. I know what I’m doing now that it’s you.”

“Yeah.” Richie laughs, soft, thinking about it. “Jesus. Imagine both of us having no fucking idea what to do.” He runs a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “You know what, actually, that’s cute. I like that thought.”

“We would have gotten through it,” Eddie says, and gives him another kiss. “It would have been fun. But I have to say, for my part I like how it worked out, I like knowing what to do for you and knowing how much better it is with you.”

“And I liked being unspoiled and unsullied for you,” Richie says in a sultry voice, fluttering his lashes, making Eddie laugh.

He likes waking up with Eddie too, usually stirring when Eddie’s alarm goes off and Eddie gives him a quick kiss on whatever skin is nearest him and pushes himself up and off of Richie. Richie is naturally slower to react to anything waking him up than Eddie is, but he’s quickly learned if he reacts in time he can keep Eddie in bed at least a while longer, at least for kisses. On weekends it’s for more, although most of the time Eddie manages to extract himself and talk Richie into toothbrushing, coffee, and breakfast. They’ll usually go back to bed for more, but there’s something about catching him before he gets up and trying to keep him there, sleep-warm with his voice soft and rough around the edges, his hair soft and on the fluffy side before he’s been able to style it into submission. 

Richie talks him into not shaving on the weekends, loving how he looks with his dark stubble, wanting to feel the scrape of it on his skin. “Just because _you_ can pull off a permanent five o’clock shadow, you handsome lantern-jawed asshole—” Eddie objects. “I look like a bum when I don’t shave, Rich.” 

“A _sexy_ bum.” Richie can be persuasive, and he has that ball-sucking trick in his back pocket. 

He loves seeing more and more of Eddie’s weird expensive products gradually appear in his shower, on his bathroom counter, brands he’s never even heard of. And it’s only now that Eddie’s with him that he realizes how much he missed just fucking having someone to _talk_ to. He’s been _lonely_ this whole time. Monologuing on stage and talking to Steve doesn’t count at all. He’s got acquaintances here, sure—he’s lived here for a long time, after all—although he hasn’t seemed to find time for any of them lately. He’s missed _friends_ , he’s missed his _best friend_ , someone who can meet him toe to toe, who already knows the type of dumb shit he likes to talk about. 

Plus they can make out afterward.

It’s been only weeks since the night Eddie came over and asked why Richie didn’t want Eddie to kiss him, and after things got rolling, in some ways it’s like they were never apart. But of course things can’t really be that easy. Decades of hearing that what he wants so badly is sinful and disgusting have taken their toll. But they haven’t stopped him wanting. There are days where with every touch, every kiss, he thinks _Fine, yeah, I’ll pay for it, whatever the cost, I’ll pay for it all. It’s worth it, he’s worth it_. Other days he’s simply glad Eddie’s making him come and he’s doing the same for Eddie, and he thinks maybe it’s no more complicated than that. It’s disquieting to think that maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal all along… but it was, anyway. It is. He thinks of those men who were attacked on the bridge. Things like that still happen these days. 

One morning Eddie, his face smushed into Richie’s neck and Richie’s arm over his back, murmurs against his skin, “Rich, you want to get fucked?”

Half-asleep, Richie says, confused, “Wait, what’d I do? Oh,” he says, blinking, realizing. “You mean… right. Right.” He swallows, hard. There’s a pulsing in his mostly-soft cock.

Eddie sits up a little, blinking sleepily back at him in the early morning light. He looks apologetic, so Richie must look pretty freaked out. “Sorry,” Eddie says. “Sorry, you’re not even awake. I just… wondered.”

Richie remembers this was on the short list of things Eddie had asked him if he’d done. “Yeah,” he confesses, mouth dry. “I mean… yeah. I want that. I want that, definitely.” He pulls his dry lower lip through his teeth. “It’s just—”

_dirty sinful shameful_

“—a lot, you know.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “‘S’fine.”

“You’ve been thinking about it, though?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie sighs, sleepy. “Gets me hot.”

“Does it?” Richie’s delighted. Knowing something about him turns Eddie on is a novel experience for him and one he thoroughly enjoys, even though he doesn’t always get it.

“God, yeah. I mean I wanted to anyway, but… your reaction the first time I blew you, that was just….” Eddie’s ears are going red. “You were so into it, it just got me thinking more.”

Richie had been unable to hide his enjoyment of that, and he hadn’t really wanted to. Yeah, the old thinking of _don’t act like you want it_ was hard to fight. But he did want it, and it was Eddie. He wanted Eddie to know he wanted him. Actually, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hide his desire from Eddie now, even if he tried. And that was a little frightening, but. “Yeah… I’d like that,” he says. “You wanna send me another appointment for it, you organized little shit?”

Eddie laughs softly. “Why don’t you send me one. When you’re ready. We’ll do it at your pace, you dick.”

Richie’s breath hitches, as he realizes he’d been wanting Eddie to take the lead here, but Eddie’s smarter than he is when it comes to this and knows Richie will have to come to terms with wanting it and make the call. “All right. Fine. Be on the lookout for an invitation to my asshole.” 

Eddie smothers a laugh in his shoulder. “Shut up, you’re turning me on.”

“Go back to sleep, horndog.”

Naturally, now that Eddie’s brought it up, Richie can’t stop thinking about it. Fucker. 

In the shower the next few days, Richie works two fingers just inside himself (he still can’t bring himself to go too deep), only now instead of feeling weird about it he thinks _It’s going to be Eddie doing this. Eddie’s going to put his dick here_ , and it gets him stupidly hard every time, his come splattering on the tile as he jerks himself off, clenching around his fingers. He feels like afterward, on the days when he’s there in the morning, Eddie can tell what he’s been doing, what he’s been thinking about, by how flushed and flustered he is afterward. But Eddie just raises a brow. Makeout sessions continue as normal.

Finally Richie can’t stand it any longer. On Thursday morning, he sends Eddie an invitation: _Saturday night, 8 p.m., Richie Gets Fucked, Location: Richie’s Asshole_.

The affirmative reply comes immediately, with an attached response. _I’m in a meeting, you dick_.

Richie replies with an eggplant emoji, a droplets emoji, and a peach emoji.

_Fuck you_ , Eddie answers.

_You’ve got an excellent grasp of the concept, I’m sure I’m in good hands._

_Oh just you wait_.

Richie sends him a kissyface emoji.

On Saturday morning, his face squashed into Richie’s neck as it so often is, Eddie tells him, muffled, “You know, you don’t have to do this just because I want to. You don’t have anything to prove, this isn’t the be-all end-all. You might not even end up liking it.”

“Like what? What are you talking about?” Richie says, and laughs when Eddie smacks him. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to like it, Eds. I spent a long time pretending I didn’t want it, and now that I can get it, I don’t think I want to keep doing that.”

“Yeah.” Eddie, somehow, shifts to get even closer to him, and sighs. “Do you want to buy the enema and the lube and the condoms, or do you want me to?”

“Enema?”

“Yeah, you know, in case you decide you want one first. You don’t have to. It’s up to you.”

“Right, okay.” Richie pictures himself in line at the corner drugstore, or even one across town that he doesn’t go to, holding an enema kit, lube, and condoms, and knows he can’t do it. Not yet. “Uh, can you buy them? Is that okay?” He realizes he hasn’t done any research and Eddie almost certainly knows what brands and types to get. He can feel himself blushing. 

“Yeah. I can.” Eddie kisses his neck.

“Sorry,” Richie mutters. “I’m a coward. Maybe one day I’ll be able to buy this stuff without wearing a ski mask.”

“No, don’t apologize, sweetheart.” Richie’s heart gives a funny little flip at the endearment. “We’ll definitely have enough for when you do me so we won’t have to get more for a while, anyway. Plus there’s always online ordering.”

“Wait a second, me doing you?”

“Yeah, if you want.”

“You want that?”

“Absolutely. If you do.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, yeah.” Richie huffs. “Jesus. I want you any way I can have you,” he confesses, in a smaller voice, half to himself.

Eddie hums. “You’re goddamn right you do. And you _can_ have me.”

“Mm, lucky me,” Richie says seriously.

Eddie goes to the corner drugstore that afternoon, and returns with an enema kit, condoms, and special lube

_for a guy who likes men that way who’s taking a man’s dick in his sinful gay ass ___

__for anal sex. Richie stares for a minute at the items on the bathroom counter. Shit’s getting real. Speaking of shit getting real, he’s decided against having an enema. Just too much new stuff to handle for one day. Eddie agrees he probably won’t need it, but says it’s good to have one on hand anyway, just in case, for the future._ _

__Richie suddenly says, voice sounding loud in the bathroom, “Do we even need the condoms? I mean, I’m obviously clean and I’m willing to bet you are.”_ _

__“Condoms make for easier cleanup,” Eddie says._ _

__“Yeah, but I….” Richie rubs the back of his neck, feeling his face turn red. “I kind of want you to… uh. I want you to… um. Come inside me.” Saying it out loud sends a hot jolt of desire through him._ _

__Eddie’s looking at him, arms folded, his face and ears reddening. “Okay,” he says. “I don’t have to, you know, if you change your mind.” Eddie clears his throat, and swallows hard, eyes darkening. He clearly wants to._ _

__“I want you to mess me up,” Richie says, and Eddie Kaspbrak, once a notorious germaphobe, inhales sharply, a flush high on his cheeks. Once again Richie mentally thanks the therapist or therapists who helped (mostly) divest Eddie of his mother’s neuroses._ _

__“Is it eight o’clock yet?” Eddie asks, a little shaky._ _

__“Be patient, Edward,” Richie tells him. They blink at each other. “Actually, you know, what’s really to stop us from doing it now?”_ _

__“Now?” Eddie’s eyebrows leap up his forehead._ _

__“Yeah, now.”_ _

__“Okay. Uh, can you give me a second? There was something I wanted to do first,” Eddie says, looking down at a second bag he’s holding. “Be right back,” he says, leaving the bathroom for, Richie sees, his bedroom, and he’s bringing a towel with him._ _

__“Uh,” Richie calls after him. “What are you doing?”_ _

__“Shut up and stay there,” Eddie calls back._ _

__Richie does._ _

__“Okay, come here,” Eddie says after a minute or so, and Richie hurries to his bedroom. Eddie has covered his bed in red rose petals._ _

__“Oh my God,” Richie says, his heart doing another funny leap. “You fucking sap.” He notices Eddie put down the towel before adding the petals. “You clean-freak fucking sap.”_ _

__“Shut up,” Eddie says, before pulling Richie’s shirt off and kissing him. Between kisses, Eddie gets his jeans off, and pushes him back on the bed among the rose petals. Eddie takes off his own shirt and jeans, Richie watching avidly as always, and bridges himself over Richie, who beams up at him._ _

__“I didn’t bring the lube,” he tells Eddie. “You gotta go back and get it.”_ _

__Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. “Damn it, Richie,” he mock-scolds, going back to the bathroom._ _

__“What? I forget things when I’m nervous,” Richie calls after him. “It’s my first time.”_ _

__On his way back to the bed, Eddie tosses him the bottle and Richie barely catches it. “Don’t be nervous,” Eddie tells him. “I’ll take good care of you.”_ _

__“I don’t doubt it, it’s just—”_ _

__“I know.” Eddie kisses him, brief and sweet. “Now get naked so I can fuck you.”_ _

__Richie sighs theatrically, and sets down the lube. “God, okay. Fine.” He takes off his socks and his boxers._ _

__Eddie, still in his boxers, bridges himself over him again, and kisses him. It’s simple and slow at first, like nothing particularly interesting is about to happen. Richie gets into it pretty quickly, because he is naked and Eddie is kissing him, but when he remembers what’s about to happen, he gets soft again, and his kisses are distracted._ _

__Eddie can tell. He shifts back a little, flushed, and blinks down at him. “You okay, Rich?”_ _

__“Uh.” Richie clears his throat. “Yeah, uh. I’m okay. I mean, I’m a little nervous, like I said….” He trails off._ _

__Eddie looks down at him, expectant. “Why are you nervous, babe? Maybe that’ll help. You think it’ll hurt? I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t.”_ _

__“I know, yeah, I’m not really worried about that.” It’s bound to be a little uncomfortable and weird anyway, he knows that, but he’s sure it’ll be more than worth it in that respect._ _

__“Then what—”_ _

__“Gimme a second, okay?”_ _

__“Of course.” Eddie bends to briefly kiss his collarbone._ _

__Richie looks off to the side and admits, “I’m... scared.”_ _

__Eddie doesn’t laugh. “Yeah? What do you think you’re scared of?”_ _

__Richie closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s so…. It’s just…. It’s….” _It’s so final_ , he wants to say._ _

__“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”_ _

__“No! No, I do want it, I want it a lot, that’s kinda the problem.”_ _

__“What, you’re afraid you want it too much?”_ _

__“Yeah! Yeah, that’s part of it, I think.” He opens his eyes to see Eddie looking at him with sympathy. “And like… it’s like so definitive, you know? Like… this is the big one. So to speak.”_ _

__“Well,” Eddie says, thoughtful, “maybe don’t think of it like it’s this big meaningful thing that defines you?”_ _

__“But… what if I can’t? Like my whole life has been about wanting this stuff,” he gestures vaguely at Eddie, at the bedroom, “and not having it, and not even really admitting any of it to myself, and there _was_ a kind of safety in hiding from all that, right, and now, this means I can’t.”_ _

__“So then you can’t hide from it,” Eddie suggests. “Is that so bad?”_ _

__“But—”_ _

__“Look, Rich.” Eddie rolls on his side next to him. “In therapy—”_ _

__Richie cuts him off. “Look, man, I don’t wanna kill your boner here—”_ _

__“Shhh. In therapy, I got told a lot that I didn’t have to force myself to feel some way just because I thought that was a way I needed to feel. Does that make sense?”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“So… I guess… if you’re scared, if this is a big deal to you, just… let yourself feel that way, and if you want this, then do it and try to enjoy it, and then see how you feel.”_ _

__“I do want it.” Richie sighs. “God, I want it so bad, I always have.”_ _

__“This, specifically, getting fucked?”_ _

__“I mean, yeah, that’s part of it. Just… like… all of it, I guess. The whole package.”_ _

__“So have it. It’s right here. You want it, take it.”_ _

__“But then it’ll be real,” he finds himself saying. “It’ll mean I’m gay. God, that sounds stupid.”_ _

__Eddie does laugh softly this time. “Rich, you were already gay. This isn’t like… proof that you’re gay. You’re gay because you wanted all this stuff in the first place.”_ _

__“Not helping. You know what I mean though, right?”_ _

__“Yeah, no, I do. It shouldn’t be this big of a deal, but it is.”_ _

__“Right? There are still people getting beat up and killed for this.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Eddie says, soft. “But… we don’t have to live in fear. I still feel scared sometimes, I still feel like there’s something seriously wrong with me and I’m gross or bad or whatever because I can’t… be normal, I can’t want what everyone says is normal, and someone will find out, and some bad shit will happen or something. But I can’t make myself not _want_ , and have to believe that it’s okay, that living in fear of my… my desires isn’t going to do any good. And I’ve tried not to. And I want you to try. I mean, you’ve already come so far. And the world hasn’t—”_ _

__“—And the world hasn’t ended.”_ _

__“No. It hasn’t.” Eddie cups his jaw. “It’s just beginning.”_ _

__Richie feels his eyes welling up. “Wow. You really know what to say to get into somebody’s pants.”_ _

__“Well, you’re already naked.”_ _

__“Fair.”_ _

__“So then shall I lube myself up? Fingers first, fingers,” Eddie adds quickly when Richie sits up a little in alarm._ _

__“Yeah, okay,” Richie says, and Eddie picks up the lube._ _

__“You’ve had a prostate exam, right?” Eddie asks._ _

__“Are you implying that a prostate exam is a sexual act? I don’t think that’ll fly with the American Medical Association.”_ _

__Eddie ignores that. “You’re in your forties, Rich, tell me you’ve had a prostate exam by now.”_ _

__“I think the last time I went to a doctor on purpose was when I was a kid in Derry.” It’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Richie’s a little mesmerized by watching Eddie slick his fingers up._ _

__“Richie.”_ _

__“No, I have not had a prostate exam. I have, however, you know,” he says, gesturing with two fingers._ _

__“And you found your prostate?” Eddie looks skeptical._ _

__“I guess not? I mean… I’d… finger myself and it felt good,” Eddie’s gaze goes a little darker and unfocused for a moment, “but I didn’t use lube, and I didn’t do it for long, I wasn’t like… spelunking.”_ _

__“Yeah, you’d know if you found it. Bend your knees,” Eddie says, and Richie’s heartbeat kicks up. Eddie gets between his thighs. “I’m not doing that yet,” Eddie reassures him. “I’m easing you into it. Here, put your hands on your knees,” and Richie is grateful to have somewhere to keep his hands._ _

__Eddie’s fingertips are gently massaging his… okay, Richie knows there’s a medical term for it but all he can think right now is _taint_ and he can’t even laugh at the word because it feels so good. A little more of that and Richie’s eyes have closed somehow, and then Eddie’s fingertip is against his asshole, dear God._ _

__“Breathe, Rich,” Eddie tells him, soft. “You gotta breathe, and you gotta bear down when I tell you to. Ready?” he asks, and… Richie nods, and Eddie waits for him to inhale. “Okay. Exhale, and like… push out, at the same time.”_ _

__And then Eddie’s finger is inside him. Richie has to close his eyes and turn his head._ _

__“You okay?”_ _

__Richie nods immediately._ _

__“Keep breathing.”_ _

__He nods again. He is, he is breathing. Miraculously. His eyes are still closed, and he’s still got his head turned, but he’s breathing, slowly and deliberately. He’s hard again now._ _

__“Okay,” Eddie says, with the patience of a saint, something Richie isn’t sure he’d have ascribed to Eddie before this. “I’m going to do two now, okay? Relax, breathe. Not too far from what you’ve done to yourself before.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Richie says, after a moment, nodding. And then Eddie has two fingers in him. It is most definitely different from what he’d done to himself before. Richie opens his eyes, and turns his head back to make eye contact with Eddie, who’s looking at him closely, eyes almost black, a flush high on his cheeks. And Eddie’s fingers get a bit further in and move a little, and—_ _

__“Oh God,” Richie says on a sharp inhalation. “Fuck, whateveryoudiddothatagain.” Eddie does, and Richie shivers all over and wheezes. He’s vaguely aware of his dick getting even harder, twitching a little. “Dear God.”_ _

__And Eddie just keeps gently pressing there, rubbing, and the tension Richie’d been holding in his upper back and thighs just melts away. His head drops back into the bed, his thighs part further; his fingers flex on his knees. He’s barely aware of Eddie watching him, eyes hot, and of the precome getting his stomach sticky. He’s making some sort of noise low in his throat and eventually he has to croak, in a rush, “Okay if you keep doing that you’re literally going to kill me.”_ _

__Eddie laughs softly, sounding a little breathless. “Well, we don’t want that.” He slides his fingers out and Richie groans. He lets go of his knees, his legs falling to either side of Eddie, and presses his hands to his face._ _

__“Jesus.” For a few moments he can only blink at the ceiling._ _

__“How do you want to—”_ _

__“Now, like this,” Richie says immediately._ _

__Eddie pauses for a moment, and when Richie doesn’t add a joke or move away or give any sort of qualifier, he says “Okay” and picks up the lube again, and Richie watches him slick up his cock with it, and what remains on his fingers gets liberally applied right where Eddie’s fingers had just been. His thighs are spread over Eddie’s, Eddie’s crouching over him, and he nods up at him as Eddie holds the tip of his cock to his asshole. _Here we go._ _ _

__Eddie’s face is flushed; he looks desperate for it, and kind of has for a while now. That’s part of why Richie had decided it was time. No more dilly-dallying; time for dicking._ _

__“Breathe,” Eddie gets out._ _

__“ _You_ breathe,” Richie returns, and Eddie huffs out a laugh at that._ _

__“Do what you did before,” Eddie tells him, and Richie does, and Richie feels his eyes widen as his asshole widens._ _

__And, okay. He’s got a dick in his ass. He’s got _Eddie Kaspbrak’s dick_ in his ass. And the world isn’t ending. _ _

__They stare at each other, Eddie sinking in slowly, face strained, evidently trying to go as slowly as possible to let Richie get used to it, and it’s obviously more to deal with than two fingers but his body is quickly catching on. His body is loving it, actually, to be totally honest._ _

__He frames his thighs closely around Eddie’s hips, and that sort of snaps Eddie out of it and he blinks, going redder. Oh, he likes that. Richie crosses his ankles behind Eddie and reaches for his shoulders, pulls him closer. “C’mon, Eds. Fuck me,” he says._ _

__Eddie inhales sharply and can’t seem to look directly at him for a second, eyes black and face almost crimson, and then he cants his hips at an angle that gets him deeper—and then Eddie Kasprak starts fucking him._ _

__The world _could_ be ending right now and he’d doubt either of them would notice. _ _

__Richie cups Eddie’s shoulder blades, a light touch, feeling them move under his palms. He wants to kiss Eddie, but he’s going at such a pace that they’ll probably give each other dental damage, and that’s fine because there’s always later and later is probably going to be really soon._ _

__Eddie tilts forward a bit and presses his face into Richie’s neck, and Richie wraps his arms around his shoulders and tightens his legs around Eddie’s hips, and Eddie fucks him harder for a while. It’s easy to get lost in that, the rocking and how it is to meet that with his own body, and he’s shocking himself by being speechless._ _

__Then with a muffled guttural sob Eddie presses deep, and holds there, and then groans softly, hips moving in slower echoes as he comes. Between them, Richie’s dick throbs but he tells it to wait a second._ _

__Richie wants to get closer to Eddie even though that literally doesn’t seem possible; he stays wrapped around him despite the fact that his joints are starting to ache. He’s kind of enjoying that, actually, the ache and the way their hot sweaty bodies are sticking to each other, the way Eddie’s catching his breath against his neck._ _

__“You’re not saying anything,” Eddie murmurs after a while._ _

__“I’m beyond human speech,” Richie tells him. “I’m communicating with you telepathically now. Can you hear me?”_ _

__Eddie chuckles softly, sounding like he’s still wrecked, and raises up a bit on his arms to draw out. Richie shifts a little; he’s not ready for Eddie to move, doesn’t want him to. “You don’t have to,” he begins, and then Eddie’s slipping out of him but wrapping a hand around his still-hard cock, so that’s an okay trade. He comes all over his stomach in short order and then just lies there, a fucked-out mess: sticky with drying lube, slick with sweat, his own come on his stomach, and Eddie’s come inside him._ _

__Eddie, shockingly, isn’t up and getting a washcloth; he’s collapsed next to Richie, partly on him, an arm over him. “You’re all tuckered out, poor thing,” Richie says, and kisses the top of his head._ _

__“Mm. Hey, Rich,” Eddie says, voice sounding the way Richie feels, “the world didn’t end.”_ _

__“Ah,” says Richie, “but the Earth did move.”_ _


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll still….” Eddie clears his throat, and puts on his sleep pants; Richie watches him. “I’ll still be able to feel you, the next day. At work. When I’m sitting at my desk.”
> 
> “Mmm. And you don’t want that.”
> 
> “It’s distracting,” Eddie demurs. “It’ll be distracting. People will notice.”

“Yeah, like this,” Eddie says, facedown and naked, voice muffled. 

“I can hear how red your face is in your voice,” Richie observes, from where he’s standing at the end of the bed and admiring the view, also naked. He gives his dick a squeeze. “It’s fine, Eddie. It’s more than fine, fuck.”

Since several days ago when Eddie had fucked him and had brought up beforehand his interest in having Richie fuck him too, Eddie’s clearly been distracted by the thought. Richie meanwhile has been thanking God that he’s on hiatus and not having to tour right now, because not only does he not want to spend time away from Eddie (it’s bad enough that Eddie has to go to work), he’s not sure he’s got space in his brain to think up new jokes just yet. As for the actual fucking, they hadn’t had time for it just yet, although it was really more Eddie deciding that than Richie, who was ready to go whenever Eddie said the word. But Eddie had a thing about not getting fucked the night before a workday. Richie had suggested calling in sick, but his suggestion was not taken. Eddie seemed, in a way, to prefer making himself wait.

“Yeah, I know it’s fine,” Eddie says, in kind of a small voice.

“So are we doing it now?” Richie asks, hopeful, although he knows Eddie’s response will be no. 

“No,” Eddie says after a moment of consideration.

Richie sighs. “Okay. Just know it’s absolutely no problem for me whatsoever. Like, I’m thrilled. I’ll barely even have to do anything.”

Eddie turns over, sits up, and laughs. Richie’s momentarily distracted by the way his cock is so hard it’s up against his stomach, where it’s smeared precome on his skin and wetted the dusting of dark hair there. “You’re lucky I’m not asking you to do anything particularly athletic and gravity will be doing most of the work for you.”

“I know, that’s what I’m saying!”

“I’m just telling you, that shit is hard.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll tell you what’s hard,” Richie says, getting on the bed and wrapping a hand around Eddie’s cock. Eddie’s apparently worked up enough already that he doesn’t bother with a retort, just meets Richie’s kiss with a little groan low in his throat, his hand finding Richie’s cock in turn. Richie kisses him breathless until he has to break, and he’s all flushed and big-eyed when Richie murmurs, “I know what you want.” Eddie makes a sound and presses his face into Richie’s neck. “Tell me again. I want to hear you say it.”

Eddie makes a noise of protest, but his cock jumps in Richie’s grip. “I… want you to… hold me down, fuck me into the bed, I want your whole weight on me. Rich, I just want you everywhere, can’t escape even if I wanted to,” he says, breath shaky. 

“Fuck,” Richie says, and Eddie squeezes him. He wraps his free arm around Eddie, pulls him closer, their hands going faster now, because Richie can tell by how Eddie’s breaths are high in his throat that he’s close just thinking about it, and knowing that is really doing it for Richie. 

“I’d,” Eddie swallows, “I’d start out on my knees, on my hands and knees, and you’d just, you’d be fucking me, and you’d just have to push forward for me to fucking… _collapse_ , and you’d have me pinned, and you’d just… keep fucking me, taking me, until you’re done, and I’d just be… getting fucked, under you. Fuck,” Eddie gasps, and comes, and Richie does too.

“Jesus,” Richie pants, “if this turns out to be half as hot as it is when you talk about it.” Eddie’s never been fucked that way, he’s said, and Richie is weirdly triumphant that he’ll get to be the first and hopefully only man to give him that. Eddie had confessed it to him like it was some kind of shameful secret, that he wanted to be pinned down by Richie’s bodyweight, and although when Richie thought about it Eddie had made no secret of how delighted he was by Richie’s size and his broadness, he’s still a little surprised that this is so hot to him. “Are you positive you don’t want to do this right now? I can go again if you give me some time.”

“No,” Eddie sighs, balling up the Kleenex he’d used to dab himself off and throwing it in the trash can. He reaches for his sleep pants. They’d been about to go to bed, but had gotten distracted by making out, and then Eddie had started talking, so….

“No you’re not positive or no we’re not doing this right now?” Richie takes the Kleenex he’s offered and mops himself off. It’ll do. 

“No we’re not doing this right now. It’s a work night. We need to go to sleep.”

“Eddie, it won’t take that long.”

“It’s not that.” Eddie’s ears are turning red. “It’s just… if I have to go to work the next day, I’ll be distracted.”

“Yeah? Tell me.” Richie grins.

“I’ll still….” Eddie clears his throat, and puts on his sleep pants; Richie watches him. “I’ll still be able to feel you, the next day. At work. When I’m sitting at my desk.”

“Mmm. And you don’t want that.”

“It’s distracting,” Eddie demurs. “It’ll be distracting. People will notice.”

“Oh yeah, you don’t want anyone to notice you’re sitting funny because you had some big guy fucking you into the mattress the night before, huh?”

“Shut up,” Eddie murmurs without heat, kissing him and handing him his boxers. 

“Wouldn’t want anyone speculating as to why Eddie Kaspbrak, Senior Risk Analyst, is sitting so gingerly, in his perfect suits and his neat hair, with his expensive watch and his Gucci loafers. What’s that, is Mr. Kaspbrak _blushing_?”

“Shut up or I won’t let you do it,” Eddie says, and Richie just laughs. 

“Fine, have it your way, we’ll wait until Friday.” Richie puts his boxers on, takes his glasses off, and joins Eddie under the covers. He’s honestly fine with whatever, and if Eddie’s only going to be comfortable with things this way, then that’s that.

So he’s not expecting it at all when Eddie wakes him up a few hours later.

“Rich,” Eddie is whispering, gently shaking him, “Richie, hey.”

“Mm?” It’s dark and Richie can’t see, but he can feel Eddie kissing his neck, and has a realization that Eddie is taking his pants off. 

“Now, please,” Eddie whispers, and Richie’s brain catches up with his dick, which is rapidly hardening against Eddie’s hip.

“Now?” Richie echoes, sitting up. “Can’t see, can I—” Richie scrambles for his glasses and to turn on the nightstand light. The lube is on the nightstand too, and he grabs it, fingers fumbling. Eddie is naked, on his hands and knees. “Gimme a second—”

“Please, Rich.”

“Baby, I know, you gotta— I just gotta—” Richie frantically gets his boxers off and uncaps the lube. “Do you need me to—”

“No, just fuck me,” Eddie replies, and Richie groans. With shaking fingers he coats his dick, caps the lube, tosses it aside.

“I haven’t done—”

“You’ll be fine, just push,” Eddie says, voice strained. “Please.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to—”

“I promise you’ll be fine.” Eddie reaches back behind him for a moment to touch Richie’s hip. Richie frames Eddie’s hips in his hands, lines up, and sinks into him.

“God, fuck—”

Eddie groans, low in his throat. Richie sinks in slowly but completely, hearing the deep way Eddie’s breathing. “Come on, Rich,” Eddie gasps out.

Hands tight on Eddie’s hips, Richie nearly draws out, then pulls Eddie back toward him as he pushes back in. “Jesus fuck you feel good,” Richie gasps.

Eddie presses back against him. “Fuck me, please, Richie, fuck me, I can take it,” Eddie says, and Richie, desperate to do whatever Eddie wants, moves faster. 

Eddie, another groan low in his throat, drops onto his elbows, knees sliding further apart. Richie presses a hand to his back, between his shoulder blades, and Eddie immediately drops forward entirely, Richie following to layer himself over him, hips still working. Eddie’s head is on his crossed forearms, and he’s panting. Richie has him pinned, and Eddie bucks back against him, as much as he can under Richie’s weight, which isn’t much. Eddie’s squirming, gasping, and Richie wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what plus he’s still kind of half-awake above the waist, and it would probably just be a variation on “You feel so good.” So he _rolls_ into Eddie instead, over and over, giving him what he wants. 

Eddie’s whimpering and mumbling half-words when he comes, tightening around him and trying to grind back against him, mindless; Richie comes soon after, of course. He settles onto him somewhat, still groggy but with his nerves alight. 

“Okay, I really do need to breathe now,” Eddie says, voice muffled, and Richie pulls out and collapses onto his side.

“That good?” Richie says, and Eddie turns to face him. 

“Very good,” Eddie answers, and kisses him, breathless and sweet. 

Richie has to break the kiss to breathe. He nuzzles Eddie briefly, nose against his cheek, dislodging his glasses slightly. “So you couldn’t wait, huh?” he teases. “Too hot for it?”

Eddie kisses him again, brief and firm now. “Rich. That was the fucking hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Richie blinks. “Okay. Uh.”

“Just accept it.” 

“I don’t know if I can,” Richie jokes, taking all that in, feeling his face get hot. “That’s… that’s big, Eds. That’s big for me.”

“For me, too,” Eddie says. ‘I…. Fuck, it’s never been like that. I…. I don’t think I knew it was possible to come that hard.”

Richie huffs out an amazed laugh. “Don’t tell me shit like this, man,” he says. “I’ll fucking get a swelled head.”

Eddie kisses him again. “Thank you. For doing that for me.”

“Uh, you’re fucking welcome, dude. Huge sacrifice but I managed to put up with it. God.” Shifting back, he shakes his head, attempting to clear it. “Okay. So are we sleeping now, or—” He looks at the clock. It’s 1 a.m. They’re both kind of sticky and the fitted sheet is a mess, but he doesn’t want to move, and he’s willing to bet Eddie doesn’t want to move either, or can’t.

“Yeah, I’m not able to do anything else right now.” Eddie yawns, and Richie takes his glasses off and turns off the light. In the dark, Eddie burrows under the covers and puts an arm over him, face against his neck as usual. Richie breathes him in and closes his eyes, lacing his fingers with Eddie’s.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is this going to be a thing where you pretend you invited me along because my mother’s dead and I’m divorced and I needed somewhere to go for Thanksgiving? Or are we telling them why I’m there?”
> 
> “We’re telling them, yeah. I’m going to tell them.” Richie scrubs a hand through his hair. “That’s why I asked you, dude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-typical homophobic slurs used in passing.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says from the bed as he watches Eddie get ready for work, “if I went to Derry for Thanksgiving, would you want to come with me?”

It had been somewhat of a busy weekend—Eddie’s birthday was on Saturday, and Richie had done his best to show him a good time—and it was with a lot of effort that Eddie had gotten himself out of bed, after giving a reluctant thumbs down to Richie’s suggestion that he call in sick for Monday. Richie still has hopes of making him regret that decision, which is why he’s lounging in bed, but it seems like Eddie’s going to work anyway. 

Eddie frowns in the mirror as he knots his tie, his reflection looking at Richie. “You mean Thanksgiving three weeks from now?”

“The very same.”

“To Derry? Do you not usually go to Derry for Thanksgiving?”

“I mean, sometimes? Sometimes we all go to my sister’s,” he answers. “Sometimes we all go to my parents’. We go at Christmas, definitely.”

“You don’t ever fly your family to New York to visit you for the holidays?”

“No? You’ve seen this place. Look, Eddie, my question is, if I go to Derry will you come with me?”

“To Thanksgiving dinner with your parents?”

“Yeah? I mean, they already know you.”

“Yeah, they do,” Eddie says. His reflection looks at Richie for a long time, considering, as he adjusts his collar. “Is this going to be a thing where you pretend you invited me along because my mother’s dead and I’m divorced and I needed somewhere to go for Thanksgiving? Or are we telling them why I’m there?”

“We’re telling them, yeah. I’m going to tell them.” Richie scrubs a hand through his hair. “That’s why I asked you, dude.”

“You’re positive you want to do this? It’s a door you can’t close, Richie. We’re talking about the same thing, right? You’re coming out to your parents and you’re telling them we’re together.”

“Yup.” Richie pops the “p” in “yup” and folds his arms, sitting back against the headboard. “I mean, I should probably tell my family before I tell my manager.”

Eddie stands next to the bed and puts on his suit jacket. “If you’re sure, then yeah, I’ll go with you.” He bends down to Richie for a kiss.

“I’m sure. And hey, look at it this way, it’s kind of a great ‘fuck you’ to Derry to do it there rather than here. Plus while we’re there we can fuck on your mother’s grave.”

Eddie snorts. “Pass. Wait a minute. Are we going to stay in a hotel or in your parents’ house?”

“Uh, probably a hotel or their guest room, though I can’t deny there’s a certain appeal in having sex with you in my actual childhood bedroom.”

Eddie shudders. “Not for me. Hotel.”

“I bet I could convince you. But okay, hotel it is. I’ll miss you,” he adds, as Eddie walks toward the door. “My ass will miss you, most of all.”

“I’ll miss your ass too, sweetheart,” Eddie says with a sigh.

His mother isn’t too surprised to hear that she needs to set a place for Eddie—she knows they’ve been in touch, she just doesn’t know the extent of the touching—but Richie doesn’t go into details over the phone. This has to be said in person. 

Booking a flight three weeks before Thanksgiving isn’t the easiest thing ever, but hey. In the time between suggesting it and going to the airport, things go on fairly as normal—normal now being Eddie spending almost every night at his place. They argue, they make each other dinner (Richie has to teach Eddie how to cook—his mother didn’t want him having that level of independence, his wife took care of all that, and he hasn’t had much time to learn since—with mixed but charming results), they watch movies, they sleep in the same bed as often as they can, which means every night except for those before mornings when Eddie has a very early meeting. On those nights, Richie misses him so badly he tries to go to sleep as soon as possible so he won’t just lie there awake, missing him. It’s truly pathetic.

In the back of his mind, Richie is mulling over How To Tell People. Part of him just wants to get it over with, rip the Band-Aid off. But waiting to tell his parents in person is just how it’s going to be. At the same time, yeah, he’s freaking out. He doesn’t even think his parents will be upset, it’s just… so huge. So permanent.

“What would you have done for Thanksgiving if I hadn’t asked you to come with me to Derry?” Richie asks as they settle into their seats.

“I just assumed I’d be hanging out with you in the city,” Eddie replies over the flight attendant announcement. He’s a little tense, never having been a fan of flying. “I’ve never really been big into Thanksgiving, not like you guys were. If you were going without me I’d just have stayed here.”

Richie takes his hand and squeezes it, thinking of unhappy little Eddie in his weird quiet dingy house with his weird mother. Not a fun Thanksgiving environment. He wishes they’d invited Eddie over for Thanksgiving when they were kids, but it hadn’t occurred to him, plus Eddie’s mother almost certainly would not have let him go. “Well, you can join us from now on, if you want.”

Eddie squeezes back briefly. He doesn’t let go until they’re in the air and the Fasten Seatbelts light is turned off.

His sister’s family is at her in-laws’ place for Thanksgiving, so it’s just Richie’s parents there when he and Eddie drive up. Eddie insisted on driving the rental car, and Richie relented although he enjoyed the argument. He did manage to get Eddie to promise to let him drive later. 

He finds he actually loves traveling with Eddie. Everything about the process makes Eddie antsy, but he’s a great navigator, he’s super organized, and he thinks of everything. It’s a little tragic that he can’t fully let go and enjoy it, but Richie’s already scheming in the back of his mind on how to maybe plan things for the future so that he might have a fighting chance on that.

Eddie lets him play whatever he wants on the radio as they drive up. Richie’s nervous enough that he can’t settle on a station or a playlist, but Eddie just lets him try to find stuff to listen to, listens to him when he reels off trivia and talks about what it was like being a DJ in college. It’s nice. 

Eddie takes care of everything when they check in to the hotel, too—he’d been the one to book it, to finagle a good deal at a decent place three weeks before Thanksgiving. Eddie hates hotels—once you know how many germs are out there, it’s hard to forget—but he seems to keep himself in check, maybe for Richie. He does, however, shower the second they get in there. Plane germs, he says. 

They’re sitting in his parents’ driveway with the engine off and Richie isn’t moving to get out of the car. “You okay, Rich?” Eddie asks, after he unbuckles his belt. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “It’s just….”

“Yeah.” 

“I want to tell them now,” Richie says. “I mean, like, as soon as I get in there.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, sounding a little surprised. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says. He’s thought about telling his mother alone; telling his parents together; having Eddie there when he talks to one or both of them. “Can I just…. I want to tell my mother, by myself, first.”

“Sure.” Eddie nods. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

They go inside, are greeted with hugs and smiles. His parents are glad to see him again so soon. Richie feels a little guilty for not coming here more often, but it is fucking Derry, after all. They’re glad to see Eddie too. No doubt his parents assume that yeah, Eddie’s mother’s dead and he’s divorced so why not come to his childhood best friend’s home for Thanksgiving? It’s not like Richie has anyone else to bring, ha ha. Richie snickers at that thought.

Eddie manages to loop his father into a discussion about, surprise, business insurance. They go to the den when Richie’s mother shoos them out because his father keeps getting in the way, she says, and Richie stands with his mother in the kitchen. She’s got stuff all over the stovetop, in the oven, everywhere, and Richie is happy to help, to keep himself occupied, but of course he can’t keep putting it off, and he wants to get it over with. 

“Mom,” he says, closing the door to the oven where he’s just put the green bean casserole in, “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it, hon?” she asks, opening the pack of crescent rolls with a pop.

Before she takes out the little sheets of dough, he steps closer to her. _Here goes_. “I’m gay.” The words are out in the air, so simple. Two syllables. He swallows hard.

She sets down the package and looks at him. “Oh! Oh, sweetheart,” she says, and hugs him. He wraps his arms around her, tight, closing his eyes for a moment. 

“Are you surprised?” he asks, still hugging her.

She pulls back just slightly to look at him. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you never had little girlfriends, sweetheart. I know there was Bev, but you didn’t feel that way about her, did you?” 

“I never had big girlfriends, either,” Richie says. “I noticed after a while you guys stopped asking me shit like when was I going to get married, have kids, all that stuff.”

“Well, we thought maybe if you did have plans, you were keeping it private, and we didn’t want to pry. We thought you’d come into it in your own time,” she says, and resumes her work with the crescent rolls, lightly smacking him when he tries to help. 

“Mom, I’m forty.”

“Well, we didn’t want to pressure you.”

“Did you guys ever… watch my act?” Richie asks, wincing. “It’s… the opposite of gay.” 

“We know show business can be strange, dear. Do you… do you have anyone now?” she asks, looking at him, and he watches the realization come to her. “Eddie?”

He smiles. “Yeah, Mom, Eddie.”

“Was it…. Did that start when you met up again, after Eddie’s mother’s service?” She looks a little amazed at having possibly been an accidental matchmaker.

“It started in kindergarten, Mom, when he let me borrow his crayons but only on the conditions that I didn’t run down the points too much and I had to put them in the box in the correct order when I was done.”

“Did you meet his conditions?”

“Of course not. And I think I broke his green one.” Richie grins at the memory. “He yelled at me.” He can still remember Eddie’s big eyes in his furious, adorable little face. Richie had been a goner without fully realizing it.

“Well, bring him in here. Bring your father in here too.”

Richie bites his lip. He’s shaking a little from the adrenaline rush, from the relief. He knows Eddie’s got to be worried and wanting an update, so he hurries to the den, where Eddie immediately looks up when he walks in. “Hey, Eddie. I told her. She knows.” The tension melts from Eddie’s face, and he gets up quickly. “Dad,” Richie adds, gesturing to the kitchen, “c’mere.”

“Your mother knows what?” his father asks, squinting. “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything?”

Richie takes Eddie’s hand and pulls him toward the kitchen, and his father is apparently too busy good-naturedly complaining about no one ever telling him anything to notice that. His mother, done with the crescent rolls, hugs a startled-looking Eddie. She says to Richie, “Tell your father.”

“Yes, someone tell me something, please.”

“Dad. I’m gay.” Maybe it gets easier the more you say it…?

His father raises his eyebrows. “I already knew that!”

“You did not!”

“Yes I did. You never had girlfriends, you always hung around with this one,” he gestures toward Eddie, whose eyebrows are way the fuck up his forehead, “you cried when he left for college.”

“Rich!” Eddie says.

“Went!” his mother says.

“Dad!” Richie says. "I hung around with a bunch of other kids, too, you know." Okay, maybe five kids didn't constitute a bunch, but.

“Ayuh, but you didn't cry over the others. He pretended he hadn’t been crying,” his father tells Eddie, “but we knew.” Looking over his glasses at Eddie in a shrewd, evaluating Yankee way, he says to Richie, “So, is this one your boyfriend now?”

It’s actually the first time anyone, including either of them, has used the word “boyfriend,” and how fucking funny is it that it’s his dad. “Yeah, Dad, he is,” Richie answers, and glances at Eddie, who’s smiling, his ears red. His mother has her arm around him.

“Ayuh, that’s nice,” his father says, with a nod of approval. He’s really leaned into the Old Mainah thing in his retirement. “Good kid. Took you long enough.”

“Shut up, Dad,” Richie says, as Eddie tells him, “You don’t know the half of it.” 

So, Thanksgiving goes better than Richie could’ve dreamed. He frequently nudges Eddie’s knee with his own or Eddie’s ankle with his foot under the table when Eddie’s talking to his parents about something boring. Richie doesn’t have to goad Eddie into giving him attention anymore but he does anyway sometimes, mostly out of force of habit. Hey, Eddie would probably miss it if he didn’t.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Richie says as he gets in the car.

“Fresh cranberry sauce is better than canned?”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. No, yes, I did cry when you left for college. I got drunk for the first time and cried alone in my bed all night.”

Eddie takes his hand over the gearshift. “Aw, Rich. That’s pathetic.”

“Yeah, I know. This is the part where you say you cried too.”

“I didn’t. I was never a crier. I learned pretty quickly that crying meant a trip to the doctor. I missed you like hell, though. Every day.” Eddie lets his hand go so he can back the car out.

“Where to now?” Richie asks. “The cemetery so we can fuck on your mother’s grave?”

“It’s too dark for that,” Eddie says. “We’re going to go back to the hotel so we can sleep. I’m about to fall asleep right here.”

“Yeah, all that turkey.”

“The turkey and tryptophan thing is a myth, Rich. It’s just that eating a lot can make you sleepy. It’s called postprandial somnolence.”

“Oh my God, I love it when you talk dirty.”

They’re too sleepy to get up to much more than groping, plus Eddie says he doesn’t want to have sex in a hotel room anyway, to Richie’s great disappointment. All the same, he plasters himself to Richie’s chest and puts an arm over him, but that’s par for the course. Eddie always sleeps like someone is going to come in the night and try to kidnap Richie and Eddie is his only protection.

“So,” Eddie says in the dark, “I’m your boyfriend now.”

“Yeah, lucky you.” 

“Mm.” Eddie kisses his neck. “I love you, you know. I haven’t actually told you that.”

Richie opens his eyes, sits up a little and blinks in the dark, glassesless. “Wait, say that again. I want to see you say it.”

“I love you,” Eddie says again, and it’s not so dark and he’s not so blind that he can’t see the open, sweet expression on Eddie’s face.

Richie goes very still, stiller than he’d thought possible. Finally, he lets himself suck in a breath, and exhale, slowly, shakily, as he sinks back into the bed. “I love you, too,” he says, almost a whisper. 

“I think,” Eddie says, sounding sleepy, “I knew I loved you, on some level, before I even knew what love really was.”

Richie pictures himself as a gangly sweaty loudmouth kid with messy hair and thick glasses. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” he says, “but I’m okay with it.”

“Then I saw you on TV and remembered that I loved you.”

“Even more miraculous.”

“You’re telling me. I even love your bald spot.”

“My what,” Richie says, and pats the top of his head. “My what? I don’t fucking—”

“Don’t worry about it, you can barely see it. Besides, I just told you I loved it.” Eddie yawns. “Rich, I don’t want to mess this up,” he sighs. “Like… I worked hard to get to where I am, therapy and all that, and I’m afraid one day I’ll snap and start losing progress and I won’t... be what you deserve.”

“You think _you_ won’t be enough for _me_? I’ve got to write this down.” 

“I mean, I’m pretty damaged. Look at my mother. Look at my marriage.”

“I’d rather not, thank you.”

“Me neither, but.”

“Eddie. I’m forty and I just came out of the closet. And only to my parents. I’m pretty damaged too. We deserve each other. At least you’ve been to therapy.”

“You should go too.” 

“I know, I know. I thought about it and then I’d immediately decide it was a bad idea because anyone worth their salt would make me face the stuff I’d been trying not to face. I wasn’t ready for that yet.”

“You might be soon. No rush, though. I think when you go, you’ll be glad you did. You know, she started treating me for anxiety but she thinks I probably have ADHD, too. I didn’t want to get on pills for any of that, you know, with my history, I wanted to try cognitive behavioral therapy first, but I might, you know, go back and maybe also try something, with everything going on now. She’s great, you should come.”

“Yeah, I should probably go.” ADHD does not seem completely out of bounds for Eddie, or for himself. Richie kisses Eddie’s temple. “Hey, I have something to show you tomorrow,” Richie says. “Before we fly out.”

“Okay. As long as we aren’t late to the airport.” 

“Yeah, yeah.”

Richie drives them early that next morning, under the pretense that Eddie hasn’t figured out what it is Richie is going to show him and it’s all a surprise.

“You ever think about how close we came to never seeing each other again?” Eddie says as they sit at a stoplight.

“Hm?”

“I mean, if my mother hadn’t died, and your mother hadn’t come to her service, and it hadn’t been her birthday that day and you hadn’t come to Derry for that, then we’d probably never have seen each other again. Kind of ironic my mother basically brought us together, considering how much she disliked you.”

“Thanks, Eds. You’ve broken my heart, with that. Anyway, we live in the same city, so we might have seen each other again.”

“Yeah, New York City. Population of over eight million people, Rich.”

“I’d like to think we’d find each other.”

“That’s very sweet, Rich, but the odds are astronomical.”

“Well, it worked out the way it did,” Richie points out. “So, I’d count us as lucky.”

“Oh, we’re definitely lucky.” 

“You believe in luck? As a risk analyst?”

Eddie taps his thin upper lip, thoughtful. “There’s something that’s not statistical odds and isn’t exactly fate, and I guess I’d call that luck.”

“Well, I think it’s luck or fate. It was a fucking close call, though. I could have just kept on the way I was, in denial about everything. Frankly I think I might have ended up killing myself. Assuming we never found each other in New York, which I do think we would have, if you were so obsessed with me.” 

“Rich,” Eddie says softly, no doubt having caught the bit about Richie killing himself. He reaches out to pat Richie’s thigh. “I’d probably still have gotten divorced. Maybe I’d reach out to you, yeah. Even if I thought you’d just want to be friends, I still wanted to see you again. Maybe I thought I could finally get over you. And maybe I’d have spent the rest of my life trying to find a man like you, and failing.”

“Well, you got the real deal now, baby.”

“Yeah.” Eddie sighs. “Maybe there’s a universe where we were brave from the start and we’ve been together this whole time.”

“Maybe,” Richie says. “I think we were pretty brave in this one, too. Just took us a while.” 

They pull up to the grassy area just before the Kissing Bridge. Richie’s heartbeat is going wild, although he’s not sure exactly why. Putting the car in park, he gets out, and Eddie follows.

Richie doesn’t need to hunt for the initials he carved—he knows exactly where they are. He points them out to Eddie. “There. I told you.”

“I believed you.” Eddie reaches out to trace the letters with an index finger. “Weren’t you afraid someone would see you?”

“I was _terrified_ , dude. Look how big they are. And I was always afraid someone would somehow figure out whose initials those were and who carved them and I’d get my ass kicked, or worse, _you’d_ get your ass kicked. But I don’t regret it.”

“That’s amazing, Rich,” Eddie remarks finally, after a few moments of looking at the initials. He folds his arms.

Richie reaches into his jacket pocket. “They’re not gonna let me take this on the plane, so I’m gonna circle back around and drop this off in our mailbox,” he says, taking out his dad’s knife, the same one he’d used to carve this. He’d found it in the junk drawer. He crouches next to the railing, and starts to reinforce the existing lines, deepening them and making them fresh. “There.”

Eddie crouches down next to him, pressing his shoulder to Richie’s. “You ever think you’d be bringing me here to look at this?”

“Nope. Never occurred to me it would even be a possibility.” Done, he sits back on his heels, looking at the initials.

Eddie kisses his cheek. “Fuck, you know, I’m glad you carved this. Look at… look at all this shit,” he says, gesturing to the carvings, old and new, calling people _fags_ , _faggots_ , _dykes_ , _queers_. Looking at them, for a moment Richie feels a stab of fear like he did as a kid, that someone will see, someone will know. He remembers that story about the guys who were supposedly attacked here. 

Closing the knife and putting it back in his pocket, he finds Eddie’s hand with his own and squeezes it.

“Eds. Thank you for coming back with me,” he says. 

“Happy to do it. I love you,” Eddie adds, reaching out again with his free hand to trace his index finger over the newer, deeper carving.

“I love you, too.” Richie sighs. “My knees are killing me.” He gets to his feet, pulling Eddie up as well, and wraps his arms around him, tight. 

Stepping back, he cups Eddie’s face in his hands, and kisses him soundly, until he has to stop to breathe. 

“Yeah, that’s right,” he announces loudly to no one and to everyone, looking around at the peaceful shade and dappled sunlight on this chilly autumn afternoon. “It’s a fucking Kissing Bridge and we kissed on it. Fuck you, Derry.”

“Yeah, fuck you, Derry,” Eddie echoes, laughing, taking Richie’s hand as they walk back to the car.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today, Richie’s decided, is the day. He’s going to make The Calls.

Today, Richie’s decided, is the day. He’s going to make The Calls. Now that he’s told his parents, everything else seems almost like Easy Street. Of course, there’s no way to be sure everyone’s going to be copacetic, but Eddie’s assured him they can deal with whatever comes up.

“Did you tell any of the others you were gay?” he asks Eddie, as he sits at the breakfast bar next to him, with a plate. Now that Eddie knows how to cook eggs, he’s gotten pretty good at it, plus they’re a great source of protein and Eddie will only eat protein in the morning since, he says, carbs just make you groggy. He’d offered to make another egg white omelette for Richie, but Richie refused, on the grounds that he was too nervous to eat and that egg white omelettes are gross.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I’ve been talking to them, like, this whole time. After you stopped talking to us.” He looks at him for a while.

Richie swallows hard. “So I was the last to know,” he quips. Eddie cups his jaw. “You know why I had to do that, right?” Richie says, and it’s hard to keep a pleading tone from his voice. “I was trying to keep myself away from you and you were still hanging out with them. I had to keep myself away from all of you and make sure none of you started asking me questions.”

“I wish I could have told you you didn’t have to do that,” Eddie says, and sighs. “They would have understood. Maybe not right away, but eventually.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know, Eddie. No one. I didn’t even want myself to know, really.”

Eddie takes his hand. “I know, Rich. But they would understand now. Trust me.”

“You think you would have understood? If I’d told you?” Richie asks. “If I’d said ‘I like boys and I love you, Eddie Kaspbrak, I’ve loved you since kindergarten’?”

Eddie sighs. “I’d have been shocked, I might have pushed you away at first—it was the Eighties—but I’d have come around, Richie. You know I told you I was never interested in anyone else but you.”

Richie spares a thought for what life could have been for them if he’d gone insane and told Eddie he loved him in high school. “So the others all know you’re gay, and they’re all fine with it,” he says, squeezing Eddie’s fingers.

“Yeah. Of course. But they don't know I’m with you. So you can tell them that.”

“You’ve been talking to them but you haven’t mentioned me? This whole time? Jesus.”

“Well, yeah. It wasn’t my secret to tell. But it wasn’t easy. They know I’m seeing someone, though.” Eddie takes his hand back to add a little salt to his omelette. Just a little. He’s kind of paranoid about hypertension, and frankly he might have reason to be. All the same, Richie’s pretty firm on eggs needing at least some seasoning. Especially egg white omelettes.

“You think they’re all completely clueless?” That’s an interesting thing to ponder. He always felt so obvious, yet at the same time not sure what it might be about him that might make him so, and it was difficult to step back and try to figure out who might guess what.

“About you being gay? I dunno. Maybe. They miss you, I know that much. I’m sure they’ll be excited to hear from you.”

“Yeah,” Richie sighs, picking up his phone. “I miss them too. Think I’ll call Steve first, though. He’s probably going to be pretty easy. You know, from that time I made a pass at him when I was trashed.”

Eddie snorts.

“What? He’s a short, snappy, dark-haired guy. He’s my type.” Eddie splutters. “Hey, Steve,” Richie says, as soon as his manager answers. “Guess what. I’m gay.” 

Eddie nearly chokes trying not to laugh.

Steve sighs. “I… yes. Thank you for telling me, Rich,” he says. “What’s your plan, going forward? You still want Gary and Brian writing for you? They’re pretty versatile but I’m sure we could find another writer or two if you wanted.” Evidently Steve has been expecting this. 

“Uh, I think I want to write my own stuff, man,” Richie tells him. “I don’t think I’m at that stage, yet, so I want to stay on break a while longer, but yeah, I want to at least try my hand at it.”

“Keeping it quiet for now?”

“I think so.”

“No press release or anything?”

“Fuck no. Actually I think I want to just, like, right out of the gate whenever I come back, just be completely fucking gay. Like it’s the same level of… whatever, it’s just gay. It’s talking about men. Like I’m almost tempted to not even acknowledge the change—”

“You talking about anyone specifically here who might object to being in your act? A real person?”

Richie looks over at Eddie. “I mean, there is someone specific now who is a real person, and… I don’t… I don’t wanna talk about him the way I talked about these fictional women, so… yeah, good point.” Eddie, nodding, finishes his omelette.

Steve sighs. “Maybe you want to apologize for all that?”

“Hey, Steve, it was acceptable enough for you to be my manager for well over ten years. You growing some morals now?”

“Are _you_?”

“Fine, I’ll apologize. I’ll put out a press release, go on a PR blitz. Hey, give yourself a Christmas bonus, Steve.” Steve sighs again, and ends the call.

Eddie gives him a thumbs up, and a wink. Richie sticks out his tongue in response.

Next, because he’s still not ready to call any of the Losers, he calls his sister, since he needs to tell her anyway. She’s happy for him. She remembers Eddie, of course. Obviously. She wishes she’d seen them at Thanksgiving. 

“Fuck,” Richie says, putting down the phone, because now there’s no one left to call that matters except the Losers, the friends he hasn’t spoken to in years. “I don’t…. I don’t know if I can do this, Eds.”

“Go sit on the couch,” Eddie directs, getting up to put his dishes in the sink. “I’ll be right next to you if I need to threaten anybody. But I really don’t think it’ll be a problem, Rich.” 

Richie calls Bev first, heart pounding.

“Richie,” Bev says, soft, surprised. “Hey, FaceTime me.”

He does, and there’s Bev’s beautiful freckled face and flaming hair. She beams at him, welling up.

“Hey, Red,” he says, soft too, smiling back and feeling himself welling up.

With a laugh, she rakes a hand through her hair. “Sorry, it’s early here,” she says, looking radiant in the morning light. 

“Oh shit, did I wake you? Where are you?”

“Arizona,” she answers, and there’s something of a blush on her cheeks now.

“Arizona, how the fuck did you end up there?”

“Um,” she says, and he realizes she’s in bed, “Ben and I lived in Nebraska for a while and he decided he’d rather live here, and so did I.” Then, she moves the phone a bit and someone’s waving at the camera next to her, and he realizes that the kind round face belongs to said Ben, although the rest of him, as much as Richie can see, is probably still kind but no longer so round as roly-poly kid-Ben had been. Neither of them seem to be wearing much in the way of clothes.

“Holy shit, Ben,” Richie yells. “When the fuck did that happen?” he asks everyone at large, and then realizes with a pang that it’s a stupid question because he hasn’t talked to them in years. “Why didn’t you tell me,” he mouths at Eddie, who shrugs. “Not my news to tell,” Eddie hisses back. 

“Honey, you’ve missed a lot,” Bev is saying, but she’s gentle. “What’s up, what’s the occasion?” She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye.

“I’m gay,” he tells them. “I’m calling you because I’m fucking gay.”

Ben smiles beatifically; Bev smothers a laugh. “That’s wonderful, Richie.” Ben presses his face into her shoulder and murmurs something, and she lets herself laugh for real at whatever he’s said. 

“Hey, don’t laugh at me when I come out to you. Hate crime,” he says. 

“We’re not laughing at you. We’re laughing… with you,” Bev says, face pink with giggling now. He sticks out his tongue at her.

“Hey, look who’s here,” he says, and angles the phone to get Eddie in the shot. Eddie waves.

“Eddie!” Bev yells, the look on her face now suggesting this is the best development so far. “It’s Richie, isn’t it? Richie is the mystery man.”

Eddie nods, grinning. Richie nods, beginning to comprehend. Bev bursts into more delighted laughter and smacks Ben’s shoulder. “I knew it!” Ben smiles, sheepish. “You guys have to come out here.” 

“Hell yeah we will,” Richie says. “Okay, I have to call the others now, so you can get back to whatever it is you were doing in bed, there. Merry Christmas, by the way. Get your stocking stuffed.” Bev sticks her tongue out, but as she’s about to hang up she’s kissing Ben. “Gross,” Richie says, and Eddie cackles. 

Bill has to be next. Richie knows Bill’s a best-selling novelist married to an actress, but he’s never done more than picked up and looked at his books in the airport, feeling too self-conscious to actually read them knowing that he hadn’t spoken to Bill in so long. Besides, he suspects horror isn’t really his taste.

Bill’s in the middle of writing something probably, glasses on, bookshelves behind him and what look like framed photos of his wife and kids. “Richie Tozier!” he yells. 

“Big Bill!” 

“What’s up, what’s happening? Haven’t talked to you in ages, my friend. Everything okay?” Bill’s face goes from delighted to concerned, like he’s realized Richie might be calling to deliver bad news. 

“Everything _is_ okay. Bill, I’m gay,” Richie tells him. 

Looking relieved, Bill’s grin is enormous. “No shit, Richie.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m happy you t-t-told me, b-b-buddy.” Bill’s eyes are getting a little red behind his horn rims and he’s blinking rapidly. Bill had a pretty bad stutter when they were kids; maybe it only comes back when he gets emotional, now.

“Hey!” Richie says, pulling Eddie into the frame with an arm around his neck. “Look who I’m gay with.”

Bill throws back his head, laughing openly and freely, and wipes his eyes when he’s starting to wind it down. “I love you guys so much,” he says. “What, are you calling everybody?”

“Yeah, we called Bev first, sorry, buddy. You were second, though.”

“I’m honored. Say hi for me. Let’s get together soon sometime, okay?”

“You got it, Big Bill. Merry Christmas, and a happy new year.”

Mike is where he works, at the library in Derry, so he keeps his voice low, and so does Richie, for the most part. He starts the call with Eddie in the frame, since he was already there. “Mike. I’m gay,” Richie whisper-shouts, and Mike breaks into a huge grin. “Eddie here is gay too, but you already knew that. He’s gay with me.”

“Hey, I saw Eddie a while ago at his mother’s service, but I couldn’t stay long. You been back here lately?” Mike teases, gentle. 

“Yeah, man, actually we met up again that day,” Richie says. “And we were, uh, there for Thanksgiving. I’m sorry, I should have come by. I didn’t think of it.”

“Me neither,” Eddie adds. “Shit.”

“Don’t worry about it—I know you wouldn’t want to spend more time in Derry than you’d have to. You were here for Thanksgiving? Together?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s big, you guys! Congratulations!”

“Thanks, Mike. Hey!” Richie adds, “looks like there are plans afoot for everybody meeting up, so we will see you. And not in fucking—” he drops his voice as someone behind Mike turns to look at him sternly— “sorry, Jesus, not in Derry.”

“Keep me posted!” Mike says. “I’d love to get out of here on vacation sometime. I’m thinking of moving to Florida, actually.”

“Retiring already?” Richie asks. “Sweet.”

Mike chuckles, warm. “I’m an old man at heart, but nah. I’m just finally getting tired of the winters up here. Looking up positions in Jacksonville.”

“Hey, if you do move there, can we all come visit?”

“Of course.”

“Fuck yes. Mike’s gonna be Florida Man.” 

Mike laughs. “Looking forward to the get-together, I’m definitely up for it.”

“Absolutely, man. Happy holidays, hopefully we’ll see you next year.” 

Last, Stan. Richie stands up, and paces, looking at Stan’s information on his screen. He thinks of their fight before senior prom, that moment Stan looked like he was going to say “I know you like Eddie.”

Stan knew—but Richie hadn’t trusted him enough to admit it, had instead turned away from him. At the time all he’d seen in Stan’s face was the fact that he knew—now Richie thinks the pity, the annoyance, was not with Richie for being interested in boys, or in Eddie, but for not putting two and two together and facing it, for not trusting him, or the other Losers. For thinking it would be better if he turned his back on them all, said no and clammed up. Maybe Stan won’t have forgiven him for that.

With the other calls he’d gotten more and more relaxed, but he’s tensed up again, heart pounding. 

Stan looks exactly the same, with his thoughtful and cool expression. “Stan,” Richie says into the quiet, and swallows.

“Richie.” Stan regards him, and then smiles, wide and fond. “Hey, Rich.”

Richie swallows again, mouth dry, and sits on the couch next to Eddie again. “Hey. I’m gay, Stan.”

Stan looks at him for a few more moments, expression soft. “Yeah, Richie,” he finally says, and they smile at each other for a while.

Richie pulls Eddie into the frame. “Hi, Eddie,” Stan says.

“Hi, Stan.” Eddie waves.

“It was Richie this whole time, huh, Eddie?” Stan says dryly.

“Yup.”

Stan sighs, still smiling. “I’m happy for you guys,” he says. 

“Thank you, Stan,” Richie says, feeling himself well up. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” Stan answers, wry, eyes twinkling. “Love you, Rich. I hope I see you guys soon.” A blond woman comes into the room where Stan is, bringing him what appears to be tea, and she kisses his cheek. “Rich, Eddie, this is my wife, Patty.”

“Hey, Patty,” they say in unison, and wave. 

She waves, her smile open and friendly. “Are these some more of your—” she says to Stan.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “My friends from back home.”

“Oh, I remember Eddie. I don’t know that one,” Patty says, playful, pointing at Richie.

“Yeah, that’s because I’m an asshole who doesn’t call,” Richie says with another wave. Eddie leans on his shoulder. “Richie Tozier, at your service, Mrs. Uris.”

“Richie is Eddie’s,” Stan tells Patty, smothering a laugh, and that phrasing makes Richie a little lightheaded. 

“I sure as fuck am. Hey Stan, we gotta meet up sometime, man. Might do something out with Bev and Ben.” 

“Absolutely,” Stan says, pulling Patty onto his lap. “Get everybody together.”

“Yeah, definitely. Okay, I’ll leave you guys alone now. Oh, happy Hanukkah, uh, what was it, ‘Chag Sameach.’” 

“Chag Sameach,” Eddie echoes. 

Stan grins at them. “Thanks, guys.”

Smiling, Richie hangs up, and puts his phone down. “That was everybody, right?” he says to Eddie.

“Yeah,” Eddie answers. “Unless you want to call Henry Bowers.”

Richie snorts. “Fuck that. Besides, the mental hospital he must be in probably doesn’t let patients take outside calls.”

And that’s that. It’s done. They know. 

Richie hadn’t let himself think about how much he missed them all, what a mistake it was to draw away and turn his back on them. Now that they’ve resumed contact he’s letting himself feel how much he’s needed them all this time. He wants badly to see them all soon—he knows it won’t feel right until they’re all together again once more.

“I should probably live here,” Eddie says drowsily one Sunday morning, naked, facedown in Richie’s bed, having showered after his run, and having been pulled back into bed by Richie’s cajoling.

“Holy shit, yes you should,” Richie says immediately from where he’s on his side next to him. He strokes a hand down Eddie’s back, like he’s petting a cat. That’s what’s making Eddie drowsy. “Uh. But are you sure about that?” he adds, because it seems like he should ask this.

“Half my shit is over here anyway,” Eddie says, muffled. “I don’t like it in my place anymore. It’s too sterile. It doesn’t feel like anyone really lives there. I feel like I barely brought anything with me, anyway.” Eddie Kaspbrak complaining that something seems too sterile—Richie never thought he’d see the day. 

“When is your lease up?”

“Two months,” Eddie says. “I’ve… told them I was probably not going to renew.”

“Wow. Only two months? You sure you want to live here with me? I’m Oscar, you’re Felix, remember.”

“You’re not that bad. I’m basically living here most of the time already,” Eddie points out. “And you always talk shit about this place like it’s some kind of dump, Rich, but it’s pretty fucking great and I think you know that.”

“Will you pay half the rent?” Richie asks, bending to press light kisses down Eddie’s spine.

“Yeah. Or you can take my share out in sex,” Eddie answers, shifting under the kisses. 

“Okay then, sounds like a deal.”

“Rich. Are you thinking this through, are you sure _you_ want to live with _me_?”

“You just said you’re living here most of the time anyway, and you told them you weren’t renewing.”

“Yeah, but… that’s in terms of my comfort. I can deal with living here way better than you seem to think I can, but you’ve never lived with anyone before, other than college roommates, and that’s different. Once they’re actually _there_ and there’s nowhere else for either of you to go, it can get stressful.” Eddie sounds unhappy, and Richie’s sure he’s thinking of his ex-wife.

“I can make you sleep on the couch if you piss me off,” Richie says. He’s now at the small of Eddie’s back, and he can feel how the kisses here make Eddie shiver.

“Rich, lots of relationships don’t do that great once the people involved start living together,” Eddie tells him.

“You’re the one who suggested this in the first place,” Richie says, and closes his teeth gently on the curve of one of Eddie’s exquisite little buttcheeks. Eddie jumps a bit. “I think we’ll be fine.”

“I know but I just…. I can be a lot to deal with,” Eddie says, in kind of a small voice. “I’m like a ball of stress.”

“I know that, Eds. But it’s only sometimes.” Richie cups his palm over Eddie’s far hipbone, studying the progression of his lower back into the perfect swell of his ass. “Stop acting like we just met. I’m very used to you.” He nips him again, and Eddie squirms.

“Stop trying to distract me from trying to explain to you why you shouldn’t want me to live with you by doing… whatever it is you’re doing,” Eddie says, craning to look at him. “What _are_ you doing?”

“Just stop trying to explain to me,” Richie says. “And I’m biting your ass, what does it look like?”

“Looks like you’re trying to….” Eddie’s face is getting pink. “Which you can do, you know. If you want.”

It takes Richie a second. He hadn’t really had eating Eddie’s ass on his mind a few minutes ago—he really just wanted to bite that perfect, firm swell—but now it’s all he can think about. It’s something he’s seen in porn, of course, but hasn’t really been interested in, per se.

“You’ve…. Someone’s done that to you before?” Richie guesses. He’s a little surprised.

“Yeah, but it seemed pretty perfunctory,” Eddie says, voice a little tight in the back of his throat. “Just like he was checking off a box, because it was something he’d seen in porn.” He tilts his hips minutely, parting his thighs a little more, and, well, Richie knows an engraved invitation from Eddie Kaspbrak when he sees one. Richie pities whatever idiot had Eddie’s ass naked in front of him without giving it the attention it deserved. 

“Well, I can’t say this won’t end up being perfunctory, but it’ll be due to inexperience rather than a lack of enthusiasm.” Richie licks the tops of the backs of Eddie’s thighs, where they join his butt, and spreads him apart. 

He is indisputably all up in Eddie Kaspbrak’s business now, really up close and personal, the shadow of his balls there, the dusting of his black curls. He is mouthwatering perfection, and maybe it’s weird that his mouth is watering, but it is. 

Making his tongue into a point, not sure if this is how he’s supposed to be doing it to start but figuring he’s not supposed to just dive right in immediately, he licks around Eddie’s hole, feeling him press his hips into the bed with a sharp inhalation. He shifts back against Richie’s mouth immediately after, and Richie presses the tip of his tongue against him, that little furl, feeling it flex. 

“Rich,” Eddie says, muffled, urgent. Richie feels Eddie’s fingers in his hair and freezes, thinks for a moment Eddie is trying to get him to stop. 

“Hm?” he says, just in case. “Want me to stop?”

“No, fuck no, keep going,” Eddie says, rapid, and Richie works the tip of his tongue into that tight little furl, feeling it flutter open for him. Fuck. His nose is in Eddie’s asscrack, his stubble is scraping his tender skin, his chin is nudging his taint (Richie always forgets the real word for it), and his tongue is now in his asshole. 

Eddie straight up moans, and he can’t keep his hips still. Richie’s dick is hard enough to pound nails, and he has to shift to give it a squeeze.

Something about this thrills him deep inside, takes delight in the sheer earthiness of it, the dirtiness even though Eddie’s shower-clean, in a way that reaches beyond any shame he might ordinarily feel for doing things much more minor, and that he used to feel just thinking about this stuff. Yes, he’s eating Eddie Kaspbrak’s ass, one of the gayest and ostensibly most degrading things he could possibly do, and he’s loving it, and most importantly Eddie’s loving it. So everybody else can go fuck themselves. 

It’s new, this feeling of revelry, and he thinks he could get used to it. Every lick is like giving the world the middle finger.

Eddie is humping the bed and murmuring and groaning into the pillow while Richie experimentally thrusts his tongue in and out of his ass. Richie hears his muttered cursing and is aware of it when Eddie gets a hand around himself, jerking himself off as Richie holds him open and basically plunders him the best he knows how. 

Eddie jerks himself faster and faster, frantic, and once he comes with a hard shudder and bats Richie away because he’s too sensitive, Richie kneels up and gets a hand in his boxers and comes all over his naked ass, the backs of his thighs, the small of his back. Eddie’s beautiful pinkened gold-tinged pale skin, its secret dusting of black hair, covered in Richie’s spit and most of all his come. 

“I think I’ve really turned a corner,” Richie says breathlessly, looking down at him. “I fucking loved that. I think I’d do it in the town square, I wouldn’t give a fuck. All thanks to your ass.”

“That is an incredible way to distract from an important discussion,” Eddie says, also sounding breathless and wrecked. “I’m going to rue this day.”

“Dude, I think the discussion’s already resolved. And I’m pretty sure if I can eat your ass I think I can handle you living with me,” Richie tells him. 

“I mean, that doesn’t really follow, but I’ll take it,” Eddie says, turning to look at him, face still red. “Mouthwash. Get me a washcloth while you’re in there.” 

Richie does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch, folks! Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t really have a day in mind,” Richie says. “As soon as possible, I guess. I mean, why wait,” he dares to add, and Eddie nods. God, it really can’t be this easy, can it? He’s dreaming, right? “So you said we need a witness?”

“We should get married,” Richie says. 

It’s two in the morning. He’s had that sentence in his head on a loop for hours, lying awake in the dark, and saying it out loud doesn’t feel like a change, but it’s out there now, spoken into the universe. It’s been just in his head—he wouldn’t dare write it down or tell anyone—but he couldn’t keep it in any longer, and now it’s out, and Eddie is stirring awake. Richie feels a stab of terror mixed with relief that Eddie heard him, after all.

“Hmm?” Eddie says drowsily against his neck. “You want to get married?”

Richie swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, Rich. We’ll get married.” Eddie shifts, settling in a little closer. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Yes,” Richie says. That was so easy he wants to laugh, but he’d wake Eddie again. Jesus Christ. He thinks of himself as a teenager and wishes he could go back in time and tell himself, _When you’re 40 you will have Eddie in your bed—no shut up, you’re sleeping, yeah you do that too but nevermind that now, you’re sleeping for this part, or at least Eddie’s asleep but you’re awake and you say “We should get married” and he says “Okay, we’ll get married” because boys can get married now. So calm the fuck down, because you get him_. 

He imagines his teenage self blinking owlishly back, uncomprehending or just not daring to believe it, shaking his head and then asking him, _What the_ fuck _is going on with your hair, are you fucking_ balding _?_

He imagines telling himself, _No,_ we’re _balding, you little shit. Enjoy that lush mane while you can_.

It’s beside the point, of course, because he had to put himself through the emotional wringer to get here and he knows it, but it’s a nice thought, the idea that he could tell his past self to calm down, that he’ll have more than he could have even dreamed of. 

More than he could have even dreamed of is now drooling on his shoulder and murmuring softly in his sleep, hot as a little furnace. Richie, finally, sleeps too.

In the morning when he wakes up, Eddie is already up, and that’s not unusual, since it’s a workday, and he’s probably already gone on his run. He can hear Eddie in the kitchen and can smell that he’s cooking eggs again. 

Richie has a moment of panic—was Eddie actually asleep when he agreed to get married? Does he even remember it at all? Shit.

Richie gets up hurriedly, crams his glasses on, and strides quickly to the kitchen. “Uh,” he says when Eddie looks up. Now what? _Do you remember when I said we should get married while you were basically still asleep and you agreed we should? You don’t? Okay, I’m going to ask you again so you’ll have the opportunity to say_ No we shouldn’t _in a fully conscious state_.

“Hi,” Eddie says, handing him a plate with scrambled eggs on it, and a fork. “So when and where were you thinking of doing this? If it’s in the city, we’ve got to go to the City Clerk’s office, so that’s better done in off-peak hours, and—”

Richie exhales in relief, feeling lightheaded. “Uh, honestly, I have literally no idea how any of that works. Logistics is your department.”

“Romance is yours?” Eddie raises his brows and starts to eat, standing in front of Richie. 

Abashed, Richie rubs his neck with his free hand. “Uh, sorry, I know that wasn’t—”

Eddie cuts him off, dimples making a brief appearance. “It was perfect, Richie.”

Thank God. Richie has no idea how he could have explained that he could not possibly have made himself get down on one knee and look directly at Eddie while baldly, nakedly asking _Will you marry me?_ with the small but possible risk of having Eddie laugh directly in his face. “It feels like I cheated. Like it can’t be this easy.”

“It was exactly that easy. Why shouldn’t it be?” Maybe Eddie already knows that he couldn’t have done it any other way.

“Yeah. I just.” Richie feels like he did as a kid when someone said "Make a wish" and you felt for a second like you could say something and it would come true, but this time it really had.

“Have some coffee and stop worrying,” Eddie says, giving him an egg-scented kiss on the cheek before going to the breakfast bar to sit. “I’ll take care of the details.”

“Yeah, you’ve planned a wedding before,” Richie says, sitting down as well.

Eddie snorts. “No, actually, that was entirely out of my hands. And I’m in favor of eloping.”

Richie’s interest is piqued. “Yeah? Like, what, going to Niagara Falls?”

“Yeah. No, we’re not going to Niagara Falls, Richie, I swear you live in a vaudeville routine. Think about it. Eloping is faster. City Clerk marriage, same place you do the preliminary paperwork, just us and a witness, then we can tell people about it and have a party whenever we want. We can call the others and throw a big thing.”

Richie likes that idea, too, frankly. Also, eloping sounds romantic even if it’s not at Niagara Falls, and that is his department. “So you’re sure you don’t want… the whole wedding thing?”

“Richie, I had that once,” Eddie says, and his mouth becomes a thin line for a moment. “I don’t really need that again. A big ceremony with all the stops pulled out doesn’t make for a better marriage, and besides, I don’t enjoy the associations.”

Yeah, okay. Richie definitely does not want to remind Eddie of his ex-wife in any capacity. What he knows of her is still sort of a black hole for the time being, and he’s very okay with that. “Right. City Clerk it is. So… when do you want to? Get married.” _When do you want to get married, Eddie Kaspbrak. When do you want to marry me, that is to say, me being Richie Tozier_.

“Well, we have to obtain a license, and then we have to wait twenty-four hours before we can actually get married.”

Somehow Richie had thought it was much less complicated than that, like just saying it made it true, although in retrospect that’s more than a little ridiculous. “A waiting period in case we change our minds?” 

“Yeah.”

“Well, fat chance of that happening, bucko. I’ve been waiting over thirty years, thank you very much. I’ve been waiting almost my entire life.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I don’t really have a day in mind,” Richie says, to avoid thinking about how easily Eddie agreed with him there. “As soon as possible, I guess. I mean, why wait,” he dares to add, and Eddie nods. God, it really can’t be this easy, can it? He’s dreaming, right? “So you said we need a witness?”

Eddie picks up his phone and types. “Yeah.”

“So, who would we—”

Eddie holds up an index finger, reading whatever message he’s got. “Bill’s in town visiting his publisher. He can do it.”

“Oh. So now we—”

“We apply for the license, then wait twenty-four hours, then we go back to the City Clerk’s office with Bill and we wait for our turn. It’s faster the earlier you get there and they open at eight thirty.” Eddie looks at him. “What will you do if you’re recognized there?”

Richie shrugs. “Tell the truth? That I’m getting married?”

Eddie nods. “So you want to go start this today? I can take today and tomorrow off. Don’t know how long it might take, but—” he narrows his eyes at his phone— “I can do most of the application online. Gotta do the rest in person.”

“Today? Uh.”

“Yeah. It’s Thursday so otherwise we’d have to wait until Monday.” Eddie looks at him. “Is this happening too fast for you? You okay?”

“I….” Richie shakes his head. “It’s fast, but… I’m fine.” He really is. “I said we should get married at like two this morning and it looks like we’ll be married by tomorrow afternoon. I…. This is exactly what I want, actually.”

“Why wait, right?” Eddie looks relaxed and pleased now, a plan forming, color in his cheeks. “Okay, lemme just….” Then Richie sits there in a bit of a daze, finishing his eggs when Eddie gestures to them as a reminder, as he speaks to somebody regarding how he won’t be in the office today or tomorrow and what to do in his stead. “I’m getting married,” he adds, and hangs up immediately afterward. Richie hoots as Eddie cuts him a mischievous grin. “Go shower,” he says. “Let’s leave as soon as we can.”

It’s not a bad subway ride to Lower Manhattan, but Richie’s so antsy he’s practically jumping up and down, and he knows Eddie would be pacing if there were room on the subway car, which there definitely is not. The wait at the City Clerk doesn’t look _too_ bad, but Richie wants to scream anyway, run in front of everybody and cut. Doesn’t everybody know how long he’s been waiting for this?

Eddie gives their confirmation number to a clerk at the counter while Richie fights the urge to run around the room yelling. It’s a close thing.

Richie pays the fee because it was his idea. Then they’ve got it.

“Okay. Twenty-four hours,” Eddie says, putting all the paperwork he’d brought and obtained back in his shoulder bag. “Let’s go home.” Richie takes his hand and squeezes it. All the way back, he holds his hand, holds on to him, because now he’s allowed—but it’s more than that they’re in New York City and it’s not at all a problem here, it’s that he’s allowing himself to do it.

As soon as they’re inside, Eddie drops his bag, sheds his clothes like they’re on fire, and hustles Richie to the bedroom, where he bends him over the end of the bed and fucks him to within an inch of his life before he can even get his pants all the way off.

The next morning they finally put some clothes on, Eddie his nicest suit of the ones he keeps at Richie’s and Richie his nicest suit because he’s getting married, and Eddie calls Bill to see where he is. 

Bill meets them at the City Clerk’s office, beaming like he’s the one getting married, but he can’t be a tenth as happy as Richie is right now. He hugs Eddie first—he was always protective of Eddie—but his hug for Richie is generous and good. 

“Hey, Richie,” Bill murmurs, thumping his back. “Good to see you.” Richie almost feels like he doesn’t deserve this, since the last time he’d seen Bill had been more than twenty years ago and he hadn’t kept in touch since besides the recent call, but Bill keeps him wrapped up for longer than he has to. Bill had been friendly on the phone, but seeing him in person seals it. His smile when he pulls back is knowing. “I’m beyond honored to be here for you guys today, you know.” 

“Rings!” Richie yells suddenly, when he catches sight of Bill’s golden wedding band in the morning light. “We don’t fucking have rings, we forgot rings.”

Bill laughs explosively. “When did you—”

“Yesterday morning,” Richie says, “shut up, Bill,” and Bill is absolutely losing it.

“We don’t need rings right now, Rich,” Eddie says patiently, “we can get them later.”

“We do need rings,” Richie insists. “We’ve got to, we gotta—” He flails. The idea of not having _something_ from this that he can keep other than some piece of paper seems unconscionable. 

“Should have bought me a ring then, asshole, this was your idea,” Eddie says, digging through his bag. “I have... this rubber band.” 

“Okay,” Richie says, and sniffles. “Do you have another one, because you gotta have one too.” Eddie does. Richie is barely aware of Bill apparently having the time of his life watching them. 

The three of them sign their paperwork, and Richie pays this fee too. There’s more waiting, and Richie once again mightily resists the urge to run around screaming. 

They’re married by an officiant in one of the chapels, and it takes less than two minutes. There’s no time for vows, which honestly would seem superfluous to Richie. What would he even say? He’d have to tell his entire life story, and nobody wants that. Eddie wraps a fucking rubber band around his ring finger, and Richie insists on doing the same for him, with shaking fingers. He doesn’t technically have time to kiss Eddie, but he does anyway, because Eddie is his husband. 

Eddie is his husband.

They take their marriage certificate, and leave the building. And they’re done. Richie’s a little disappointed no one recognized him in there.

“What now?” Bill asks out on the sidewalk. “You want a picture?” Bill takes a picture of them outside, holding up their rubber-band-adorned left hands along with the certificate. Bill takes a picture of Richie dipping Eddie while Eddie holds on for dear life, red in the face. Bill takes more than a few pictures of them kissing, until he has to clear his throat because they’re blocking the sidewalk.

Bill narrows his eyes at them as he and Eddie discuss where they’re going to go eat lunch, and he says suddenly, “I’m going to send these to the others.”

“Fomenting chaos,” Eddie mutters, but he doesn’t technically object, and Richie goes over to see how the pictures came out before they’re sent.

Within moments, Bill’s phone is chiming with notifications. Bev calls immediately, and yells that she has to talk to Richie or Eddie that instant. “Fly out here,” she insists, “oh my God, fly out here. I can’t believe you did this! I’m so excited!”

“We were going to have a party for everybody anyway,” Eddie says, and Richie adds, “Are you guys offering to host, because—”

“Yes! Get everybody out here. God, I can’t wait to see you again!”

Mike replies with an emoji with an open mouth. Bill shows them Stan’s text: _Really? Are those rubber bands?_ which he follows with _:)_.

They go to lunch with Bill, holding each other’s hand under the table most of the time, not because they need or want to hide anything from Bill but because this is just for them, right now. Richie is very careful not to lose his stupid rubber band ring. 

They see Bill off, and go back home. Richie fucks Eddie on the living room floor, Eddie’s runner’s legs tight around his hips. The stupid rubber bands are all they keep on.

“Shit, I love you,” Richie pants, dotting Eddie’s sweat-slick neck with kisses, Eddie clutching at his back with his left hand (Richie can feel the rubber band), with his right pulling at Richie’s hair. “I love you so much, Eddie.”

“I love you too, sweetheart,” Eddie says, the seemingly incongruous endearment sending Richie to the stratosphere as usual when Eddie says it. “Fuck, I love this but I’m getting rug burns and this has got to be killing your knees.”

“It is. I don’t fucking care,” Richie says fervently, arching up so Eddie can wrap around him more and reduce the square inches of his skin that are rubbing on the floor. “Okay, maybe I care a little. Good thing this isn’t going to last long. Fuck.”

They don’t have a honeymoon, per se. They spend the rest of the weekend having sex, so maybe that counts as one, although if you asked Richie he’d say the rest of their lives is the honeymoon, so luckily no one will be asking him, because that is admittedly corny as shit. 

Eddie goes back to work on Monday, with a rubber band on the ring finger of his left hand because they hadn’t managed to get themselves out of the apartment and to a jewelry store. He keeps it on all day, he says, but soon after he gets home he decides they need to go out and buy rings. Richie is fully on board. 

Two simple but solid gold bands, one smaller but otherwise identical. Richie tells the jeweler they want “R+E” inscribed on the interior, and they are willing to wait. 

“Didn’t anybody at your work think it was weird that you said on Thursday that you were getting married on Friday and then you come in today with a rubber band on your finger like a crazy person?” Richie asks while they wait. He knows there’s no way Eddie Kaspbrak’s incipient marriage wasn’t the hot goss on Thursday and Friday, and the ring today. He’s criminally fascinated by how Eddie’s coworkers must view him, and he’s wildly jealous of them: getting to see Eddie in a suit every day, being competent and serious and tense and weird and a little goofy. They’re probably scared of him, too; he probably bitches at them a lot. Richie is _so_ jealous. “Will they figure out you must have married that guy who made you sit funny that one day?”

“They did seem... curious,” Eddie says loftily. “When they see I have an actual ring I’ll feel less like I’m insane, but only just.” 

Once it’s on, he can’t stop looking at his hand. He is standing in a jewelry store in New York City with his husband, and they’re wearing their wedding bands. _Yeah, fuck you, Derry_ , he thinks. _Suck it_.

Richie keeps the rubber bands together in a little box in his—soon to be _their_ —top dresser drawer.

He calls his parents, and his sister. They’re excited, a little chagrined that he eloped (except for his father, who thinks it was sensible), but not surprised that he married Eddie and that he did it without having time to get rings (he leaves out the fact that he’d straight up forgotten, and had then become obsessed with getting something, anything, to serve as a ring). 

In fact, no one who knows him or them seems all that surprised about it. Richie would probably feel sillier about that if he didn’t have better things to do, like spending his time balls-deep in his husband or vice versa, with both of them wearing only their wedding bands.

Eddie gradually starts to move his stuff to Richie’s, in anticipation of his lease ending. Richie suggests ending it early, but Eddie doesn’t want to pay the fee, and says it doesn’t really make a difference anyway, since he basically lives with Richie already. 

“It does make a difference, though,” Richie argues from the couch. 

“It’s too—”

Richie presses his hands to his face. “Oh my God, please don’t fucking tell me it’s too soon. We are literally _married_ , Eddie. I want you on my lease. Find another tenant and they’ll let you out early, you’ve already given notice, right?”

“Yeah, but…. Aren’t you afraid this is _all_ too soon? We’re fucking married, we’re about to move in together— We met again not even a year ago, Rich.”

“No. Eddie,” Richie says, “do _you_ think this is too soon, or do you think _I_ think this is too soon?”

Eddie looks at him. “I think you think it is and you aren’t telling me.”

“Well, I don’t. Yeah, it’s incredibly fast. Yeah, for most people I’d be concerned. But I’m not because it’s you. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this, with you.”

“But you haven’t— You don’t know—”

“I don’t know any better because I’ve never been in a relationship or married before?”

Eddie nods, looking like a Margaret Keane painting with his big sad eyes.

“What do you want me to do, Eds? Do you want me to start seeing other people to make sure I really do love you best of all? I don’t know about you, but that would make me completely miserable. Please, trust me.”

“I do, I do trust you, I just….” Eddie sighs. 

“I love you. I can barely remember not loving you. I can’t imagine loving anybody else. Maybe I will someday, I dunno. Maybe someday I won’t love you anymore. I mean, theoretically anything’s possible. I just really, really doubt that will happen, and even if it does it’s not relevant to me wanting you on my lease right now. Or as soon as possible. And forget about me not having a basis for comparison. I don’t need one. You’ve got one—you don’t think of me as just your rebound or something, right?”

“No.” Eddie shakes his head. “It’s just…. I’m just…. I don’t know, Rich, sometimes I’m afraid this is too easy, it’s so easy it can’t be real.” His eyes are welling with tears. “Maybe it’s like you said, it can’t be this easy. Maybe you were right.”

Richie stands immediately, wrapping his arms around him. “Hey, no, no,” he soothes. “I’m never right, no.” Eddie laughs softly, and it’s watery. “Remember, you asked me why it couldn’t be that easy. But Eds, think about everything we’ve been through just to get here. Was that shit actually easy? No. It _feels_ easy now because it’s not supposed to be a difficult fucking nightmare which I think has been your experience to date. We paid our dues, friend. We deserve to be here, the rug is not going to be pulled out from under us.” 

Wrapping his arms tightly around him like Richie’s a flotation device and he’s in danger of drowning, Eddie suddenly sobs against his shoulder. “I don’t— I’ve never had this before,” he says, muffled, voice thick. “I wanted it so bad and I told myself I didn’t need it, I could do without it and I’d be fine—”

“I know,” Richie whispers, closing his eyes. “I told myself the same shit.” 

Eddie draws in a sob. “I’m so scared it won’t turn out to be real,” he says softly, like he’s afraid to say it.

“I know it feels like some kind of trick that’s too good to be true,” Richie says, “but just remember how annoyed you get when I won’t clean as I go when I’m cooking and how you hate it when I leave my socks on the floor.”

“But I love that shit, Rich.”

“Don’t tell me that, it only encourages me,” Richie says, feeling a tear slide down his nose. “I’d tell you you do annoying shit that reminds me I’m not living in a fairy tale, but I love everything you do, especially the annoying shit, so that won’t work.”

“You never have to remind yourself this is real?”

“I do all the time. I’m constantly pinching myself. I watch you sleep, but not in a creepy way, and I think, ‘This is my husband, _the_ Eddie Kaspbrak. He’s really here.’ But it is real. I just…. Please, please don’t worry about problems that don’t exist, my love, my own heart.” 

He can feel Eddie soften a little against him, but his sigh is shaky. “I can’t help it. I think…. I think sometimes I’ll get bad again, I won’t end up being good for you.”

“Babe.” Richie runs a soothing hand up and down Eddie’s arm. “No one has ever been better for me than you. It’s not even close. Fuck, man, I still feel sometimes like I don’t deserve this.”

“You do,” Eddie sniffles, and Richie feels his wet tears on his neck. “I love you so much, Richie. God. I’m sorry, I’m just….”

Richie kisses his temple. “Please, Eddie, live with me. You are literally my husband. You pretty much have to live with me. Right?”

“Right—”

“Who else could put up with my shit?”

“Nobody,” Eddie replies.

“Yeah. You’re goddamn right they couldn’t. Now get your fucking name on my lease.”

“Now who’s talking dirty?”

“Boo,” Richie groans, and presses a few kisses to Eddie’s tear-wet but smiling face. “You know, I’m not used to you crying in my arms while you tell me you love me, in the aggregate I have way more experience with you yelling at me.” 

“Well, get used to it, asshole.”

“Is the crying optional, though? Because… given the choice, I prefer the crying-free package.” Richie remembers what Eddie had said about not being a cryer, and goes still for a moment, wondering if he’s misstepped. 

“Depends on why I’m crying,” Eddie informs him. “I could always yell at you that I love you, if you’d prefer that.”

Richie nods. “Yeah, okay, that. You yelling that you love me will probably open entirely new avenues of sexual Pavlovian responses, so there’s that. We both win.”

“I like it when we both win, Rich.” Eddie slides his hands down to squeeze his ass, sucking at his jaw approximately where the tear slid down.

“Crying _before_ sex, that’s a new twist,” Richie breathes, before Eddie takes his hand and pulls him to the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left! Again, thank you for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Group chat is how they decide when they’re all going to meet up out at Ben and Bev’s place. It takes a while to get everyone coordinated, but spring it is. “Spring in the desert is beautiful,” she tells them. Bill’s wife is busy with an acting job, and Patty tells them she knows how important it will be for them if it’s just the seven of them. The Lucky Seven, the Losers. Straight Outta Derry.

Once they’ve let everyone know they’re married and living together, it’s like the floodgates open and the Losers all can’t stop messaging each other. 

Of course, the others minus Richie already had been talking to each other. And Richie and Eddie text all the time. 

Richie sends Eddie a dick pic one morning from bed (the attachment is labeled “Richard Picture”), and receives an immediate reply reading _I am in a meeting, asshole._

_Did you not read the file name? Not my fault_ is Richie’s response. Minutes later he sends a picture of his hand around his still-mostly-hard cock, both it and his fingers covered with come. 

_Still in a meeting!_ Eddie replies. 

_Then stop checking your phone, dude. Wish you were here_ , Richie answers. 

But with everything out in the open and Richie back in the circle, it’s like old times, only over text and the occasional video call (no Richard Pictures for the rest of the group, of course). He can sense that things feel complete now, with all of them together. 

Richie doesn’t tell them he’d been a virgin up until last year. Sure, they’d known he hadn’t been having sex as a teenager, but they… might be surprised at how long he went without actually having sex, period. ...Or they might not be, considering that none of them seemed that shocked to find out that he was gay. Knowing for a fact that Eddie was his first would probably send them all over the moon; he’d never hear the end of it, and he just can’t give them the satisfaction. It’s bad enough that they seem to know him better than he knows himself. Besides, he thinks, it’s really just his and Eddie’s business. It’s private, for them.

Bev FaceTimes them from her patio, with Ben making special guest appearances. Bill shares pages from his drafts. Mike sends them “Today in Derry History” links no matter how much they protest. Stan and Patty send them all pictures of the special birdhouse and birdfeeder setups they’ve got (Stan’s interest in birds is just as strong as when they were kids), and of the twins, in soccer uniforms or posing with science projects. He and Eddie show them all what Richie’s been cooking, what Eddie’s attempted to cook, and what bits Richie is working on for his big gay comeback, whenever that ends up being. Richie’s in no hurry, personally, but he knows the bug will bite him soon. It doesn’t matter what they all say to each other, though. The important thing is they’re talking. Most of the time they’re all in the same chat. 

Group chat is how they decide when they’re all going to meet up out at Ben and Bev’s place. It takes a while to get everyone coordinated, but spring it is. “Spring in the desert is beautiful,” she tells them. Bill’s wife is busy with an acting job, and Patty tells them she knows how important it will be for them if it’s just the seven of them. The Lucky Seven, the Losers. Straight Outta Derry.

The night before they fly out, Eddie’s already mostly packed, and he’s been fretting out loud all evening about what he has left to make sure to bring. Richie’s only packed some clothes, because waiting until the last minute has never been a problem for him, and they definitely have stores in Arizona if he forgets anything that Bev and Ben won’t have. 

“You have a list, don’t you?” Richie asks as he watches from the bed as Eddie runs around the room, pulling drawers open and muttering to himself. They’d gone with keeping Richie’s bed over Eddie’s, since it has more memories. Finalizing the move hadn’t stressed Eddie out as much as he’d expected, and he’d been more than willing to part with the bed. Richie would not have expected Eddie Kaspbrak to so readily assimilate himself into his apartment and his life. Of course, he’s done a shitload of organizing, and Richie is all too happy to let him, Eddie criticizing his stuff all the while (“These hangers are terrible, they’re like the worst kind you can have. Jesus, Rich, you have more money than this!”).

“I have three lists,” Eddie mutters.

“Babe. C’mere,” Richie says, patting the bed. “You’ve got lists. We have time tomorrow before we leave. They have stores in Arizona. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, I just—”

“It is fine. C’mere.” Richie holds his arms out, and Eddie, pausing, relents and walks over into them. Richie wraps his arms around him. Every time he gets to do this it feels like a miracle. “You’re so tense. We’re going on vacation tomorrow, we’re seeing our friends. I know you hate travel but this is supposed to be fun.”

Eddie sighs, melting a little against him, wrapping his arms around him in turn. Richie presses a kiss into the smooth, tender skin on the side of his neck. “I know. I’m excited, I swear.”

“I know, you just… don’t have to freak out. It’s fine. You’ll get everything packed, you’ll remember everything. You always do. You have three lists.”

“I’m all keyed up, I guess. Haven’t seen everybody in so long. I haven’t had a real vacation since….” Eddie stops for so long that Richie pauses to shift back and look at him. Eddie has a strange expression on his face. “Since my honeymoon with Myra,” he finishes, quiet. “I…. God, Rich, I remember our last morning, before we headed to the airport, I thought ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad.’ I fucking…. That was my first thought after my fucking _honeymoon_ , Rich. ‘That wasn’t so bad.’ Myra didn’t deserve that, I didn’t deserve that.”

“No,” Richie whispers, wrapping his arms around Eddie again, closing his eyes. 

“We never went on vacations after that. I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal. I mean yeah, some people stay at home because they’re happy at home together. We weren't like that. And I didn’t even realize it.”

“But you hate traveling, Eds.”

“No, traveling makes me nervous. There’s a difference, Rich. It’s romantic, going on vacation with someone is romantic. If I wanted to do that with someone, I’d deal with the anxiety and go for the romance. To be with them. Myra and me, we didn’t have that.”

“Yeah.”

“Even after divorce, after therapy, when I started dating men I….” Richie can’t help inhaling, and Eddie combs gentling fingers through his hair and trails them down his neck, and back up. “I still didn’t feel it. I kept waiting for it. Like… they made me feel good, they made me feel wanted. But I kept waiting to fall in love with one of them. My therapist… my therapist told me I needed to, you know, put myself out there, since I was trying not to be fixated on you because I thought you were straight and I wouldn’t ever see you again, but I kept thinking about you anyway, Rich. I really did try not to. I remembered how she told me not to pour all these emotions out into nothing, how I needed to invest them into my own life, and… at that point I’d mostly stopped looking you up on YouTube, and I really did try to date these guys like they deserved but I just…. I would keep thinking of you anyway, I kept wanting it to be you.” His breath hitches.

“It’s me now, Eds. It’s me,” Richie whispers.

“And then we… and then I saw you again, and it was like the lights had been turned back on. And then everything started feeling like a weird dream, like the weirdest, best dream I’d ever had. Richie, after I left Myra, I— I fucking needed to be touched, so bad, I craved it so much it made me cry sometimes. The guys I slept with, I tried but it never— It never felt right, Richie, never until you. And you were— Fuck, Richie— And I loved you, I wasn’t just sleeping with you, I loved you—” Eddie inhales sharply, almost in a sob.

With the lightest presses of his lips, Richie kisses his neck, the curve of his collarbone, the bob of Eddie’s throat as he talks. His voice when he speaks against Eddie’s skin is barely audible, and rough. “I know, I know. This…. I thought I would never have what I have with you. I never thought this was possible. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Eds. I’ve loved you this whole time.” He cups Eddie’s jaw, his touch gentle. “You were it for me. You are. And now you’re here, and we’re married. We’re fucking married, Eds. _We’re fucking married_. We made it, man. We did it.” He’s as much reminding himself as he is Eddie.

“Richie,” Eddie whispers, shaky, a hand still in his hair, gently pulling his head back for an angle better for a kiss, a kiss that’s both urgent and sweet and which seems to imply there’s more to come.

“I thought you needed to finish packing,” Richie whispers, pulling Eddie to straddle his lap.

“I have three lists, I can do it in the morning,” Eddie whispers back, pushing him back onto the bed. “I’ve been reliably informed they have stores in Arizona. Touch me.”

“God, whatever you want,” Richie says, a sort of helpless rawness in his voice he doesn’t have any control over, tugging at Eddie’s shirt. Eddie pulls it off, hastily, a little clumsily, and then Richie’s hands are on his skin.

“I love that you mean that,” Eddie murmurs, and kisses him before he can even try to deny it.

They’re married and Richie still can’t believe that Eddie is so often less than an arm’s length away. Which is weird, since that was so often the case when they were kids: jostling along while walking together, shoving, sitting too close together, trying to walk through a door at the same time, following each other somewhere, bumping shoulders, Richie grabbing Eddie’s arm to get his attention, to show him something, hands sticky with soda or sweat. 

Richie thinks now that maybe he kept himself so close to Eddie not just out of a need for attention from him, but out of a fear he’d vanish somehow. Although he didn’t have the vocabulary to think of it that way at the time, every little touch felt furtive at its core, like at any second he’d be found out and wouldn’t be allowed anymore, so he had to get it in while he could. 

Now he can want, he can have.

As Eddie kisses him, he learns him again with his hands: cupping his jaw, down his neck, down his sides, feeling his ribs expand with his breath; how hot his skin is, how he shivers when Richie’s touch is feather-light, how he arches in attempts to press against his palms. 

As he works his fingers into Eddie’s sleep pants and around his stiffening cock, Eddie moans into the kiss in a desperate way that has Richie’s dick getting hard too. Eddie’s ability to kiss him rapidly degrades as he thrusts into his grip, but the kiss is all the better for it, Eddie mumbling what might be words against his lips, a sharp groan as Richie gives him a squeeze. 

Richie’s other hand is still roaming over his newly granted territory, fingertips tracing down the hollow created by his spine and then tracing over the goosebumps that brings up. 

He rubs the pad of his thumb over the tip of Eddie’s cock, other hand dipping beneath the waistband at the back of his pants, guiding his motion into Richie’s grip, squeezing his ass in a possessive hold. Eddie comes with a choked cry.

As Richie moves the hand slick with Eddie’s come into his own sleep pants to grip his cock with shaking fingers, Eddie bites his lower lip, kisses down his jaw, his throat, breaths fervent and hot on his skin as they shudder together through the last of Eddie’s orgasm and the hints that Richie’s is imminent. 

“Give me a hickey, Eds,” Richie gets out, voice unsteady. “Come on, baby. Mark me.” He half expects Eddie to laugh and refuse to do it, and wishes for a second that he’d fluttered his lashes, exaggerated his tone into a husky mocking demand instead of asking for what he wanted so nakedly.

“Yeah,” Eddie says rather than scoff at him, breathless, and he sucks a kiss along the tendon in Richie’s neck right at the spot that makes him quiver and moan, his cock twitching in his hold. Leaning on one hand, Eddie wraps the fingers of his other over Richie’s hand, and with a sharp exhalation at that, Richie comes.

Eddie sinks down onto him, although they both know it won’t be for long. Sweaty and sticky, they’re quiet, Richie listening to Eddie’s breathing as it returns to normal, thinking about how Eddie used to think he had asthma, thinking about Eddie’s lungs breathing him in; thinking about the way sometimes Richie gets that uncanny feeling that Eddie’s body is somehow both Eddie’s and his own, that he’s not sure where his body ends and Eddie’s begins, that he can feel what Eddie feels. It’s not a thought he thinks he can articulate to him, however, certainly not right after coming, but he’s fairly sure Eddie wouldn’t laugh at him or wouldn’t know what he’d be talking about. Maybe he might feel the same way.

“Okay, we have to get to sleep,” Richie mock-chides moments later, low, nudging him. “We have a flight to catch tomorrow. And we still gotta pack, dude.”

Eddie groans, exasperated, shifting back in preparation to grab Kleenex, and get clean or clean-ish pants for them that aren’t wet with come. 

“Hey. C’mere,” Richie says before Eddie can get up, drawing him down again with his dry hand cupping his jaw, kissing him firmly before letting him go. Eddie looks like a beautiful mess, flushed and mussed with his eyes dazed and wide like he’s still stunned. 

Richie savors it.

“Rich,” Eddie says on the plane, where he seems a lot calmer than he has on previous trips (something for which Richie thinks he can probably take credit), “I’m thinking of making a career change. You’re right, this is boring, it’s starting to feel like it’s caging me in. I’m not sure I wanna do this anymore.” He shifts in the narrow seat with a sigh. 

“Yeah? What are you thinking of doing? Underwear model? I can see that for you. I wasn’t going to say anything yet, but….”

“Shut up. And don’t laugh at me,” Eddie says as he tightens his seatbelt, a little primly, blushing just a touch.

“What, what is it?” Richie’s dying of curiosity, wracking his brain. “Sex toy shop owner? Mob boss? Stripper?”

“No,” Eddie tells him, stern. “I want to…. I want to be a mechanic. I want to restore classic cars.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “I can’t believe this is making you blush, you’re so cute. That’s like the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, I thought you’d fucking laugh at me, Rich.”

“ _¿Por qué?_ ” Richie elbows him. “Oh my God. I love that. I wouldn’t tease you for that. I mean, maybe a little because you’re a total nerd, but it’s a great idea, Eds. Go for it.”

Eddie jabs him back. “Fuck you, maybe I will.” He sticks out his tongue, but then he grins, dimples everywhere, eyes twinkling with happiness. 

Richie takes his hand and squeezes it. “That’s a lot of new shit happening at once—you sure a major career change won’t be too much?”

“I mean, I couldn’t do it right away,” Eddie acknowledges. “There’s vocational school and certification and apprenticeship. And it definitely doesn’t pay as much as what I make now, unless you’re really, really good and you’re selling, too, so… But I don’t know, I’ve got investments, or maybe I’ll just end up being into it as a hobby and I’ll be a consultant or something. But it’s just… good to have something to plan for. I’ve been thinking about it a while, just haven’t said anything to anybody yet. I’m really excited about the idea, Rich. You know I’ve always liked cars.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

“My therapist,” Eddie continues, voice lower, “said that she thought I liked cars and trains when I was little because of my subconscious desire to escape my mother.”

Richie stifles a laugh. “Yeah, I think she might be onto something.”

“You should see her.”

“I know, I know.” Richie sighs, fond. “I will.” He rubs his thumb over Eddie’s hand, and Eddie squeezes his hand back. “Eds. Whatever you end up doing, I support you. I will literally support you if I need to, with the money I’ll no doubt rake in from my new gay jokes act. I'll be your sugar daddy. Fingers crossed.”

Richie’s more or less used to flying out west, but Eddie’s not, and he falls asleep leaning on Richie’s shoulder as Richie pages through SkyMall and goggles at the insane products: a garden statue of Bigfoot? A purse with a giant eyeball on the side? A Christmas ornament shaped like a pierogi? He makes a mental note to get that one for Eddie, for next year, and whispers “my little pierogi” to himself as a possible term of endearment. It might sound too much like “My Little Pony,” he decides, but it’s worth trying.

They’re all staying at Ben and Bev’s, which is enormous, almost like Ben had been anticipating a time when they’d all be there together. Stan’s already here, of course, and Bill drove Mike from the airport, so he and Eddie are the last to arrive. 

Ben is indeed a transformed man; Bev looks the same, timeless Titian beauty. Stan literally looks like a taller version of himself as a child. Mike, in contrast to Bill who isn’t really Big Bill anymore, is gigantic, and they’re all kind of in awe, even Richie who’s used to being one of the taller guys in any given room at this point. They all hug him, and each other. There are tears, some or most of them Richie’s, and he finds himself muttering “Sorry” whenever their arms go around him, like some sort of ritual of contrition. He almost feels like he doesn’t deserve this outpouring of warmth, not after so many years of cutting himself off from them, but decides the important thing is that they’re literally welcoming him back with open arms.

“Jesus, Richie,” Bev remarks, alone with him in the kitchen for a moment, once they’ve started bringing in their things. “I swear there was a time you weren’t that much taller than me.” She looks Richie up and down, and he’s pretty sure he sees her gaze catch briefly on his hickey. She waggles a brow, and winks. “Looking good, kid.” 

“Down, girl,” Richie says. “I’m taken. So are you. Congratulations, by the way. Wow.”

“Thank you,” she replies, with a winning smile. She adds, almost conspiratorially, “I did have a first husband. Not such a great guy.”

“No way, are you serious?” Bev’s face changes, the smile dropping. She’s serious. “Like, what… restraining order not-great?”

“Order of protection not-great,” she says, nodding, a sadness passing through her eyes. Richie guesses an order of protection must be worse.

“Holy shit, Bev,” he says, stunned, and covers his mouth with his hand for a moment, thinking about it all, another wave of guilt washing through him. “Fuck. ...Fuck, I’m sorry I wasn’t around for you then, I’d have murdered the guy myself.”

Bev laughs softly. “You sure you could kill somebody?”

“Hey, fuck yeah I’d kill somebody for one of you. Hell, Ben better stay on his toes, I’d kill him if I had to.”

Ben happens to walk in then. “What’s up, guys?” Bev wraps her arm around him and pulls him in, and God bless him, he still blushes when his wife holds him. Richie wonders if he blushes like that when Eddie shows up and figures he probably does.

“Just talking about how great you are, man.”

Ben and Bev show them around the place, the _property_ really, the _estate_ , with its beautiful flowing walkways and open sections, alternating with cozy spots and seating areas. It’s made for partying, yet the material and the curves echo the soft creams, blues, deep oranges and feelings of the quiet open desert around them. It’s open enough to let in the cool night air. 

Ben’s done a beautiful job—he’s an architect now, which makes sense, given that the underground clubhouse was his doing—and Bev, now a fashion designer, did the interior design. It’s a wonderful example of partnership, their talents coming to the forefront, together. They’re so at ease with each other that it feels like the satisfactory conclusion of a sentence that started when they were kids. 

Richie sees Ben again in their open kitchen later, and asks about the counters as he leans on one, because he’s in his forties and he cares about that shit now. Ben explains how he sourced the material and offers him another beer from the fridge. From here he can see the gym area they put in, the wide deck for stargazing that they’d all just been out on, with the firepit there, eating canapés next to the grill. It’s all both welcoming and makes you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, away from the world, with the Milky Way above, faint hints of the dying light off in the west. 

Ben keeps glancing at Bev out there, who’s teasing Mike, Stan, and Eddie in a discussion about baseball while Bill thumbs nosily through their book collection in the capacious sitting room adjacent, and idly listens, occasionally chuckling and offering a contribution. It’s like the clubhouse only much more expensive. Clearly on paper it’s nicer because it’s not a literal hole in the ground in the woods furnished with old junk, but there’s that same feeling. 

Bev will occasionally look back at Ben and smile, and he’ll give her a little wave like they’re at a school dance and she’s waiting for him to ask her, and he’s wanting to ask her, blushing slightly, for all the world like they aren’t married, with years of no-doubt athletic sex in a California king in a room that probably faces the sunrise and has remote-control curtains. 

“So,” Richie quips, thumbing the cap from his beer, “what’s it like getting literally everything you want?”

Ben smiles, sweet. “Don’t you know?”

Richie looks at Eddie, who must feel him looking and dimples back at him (“dimples” is a verb, when it comes to Eddie). Something on Richie’s face or in his body language must beckon him, because he excuses himself and comes in, eyebrows raised in a question, and Richie sets his beer on the counter and wraps him up tight in his arms. Unquestioning, Eddie wraps his arms around Richie in turn, relaxing against him like his unspoken question’s been answered. 

Over Eddie’s shoulder, Ben’s smile at him broadens. Bev’s smiling at him, too, from out there as she keeps talking with Mike and occasionally arguing good-naturedly with Bill. 

Richie can feel his heart beating against Eddie’s chest, can feel Eddie’s beating in turn and can’t tell which beat is which, exactly, the soft reassuring thumps gently reverberating against each other in wordless conversation. Fuck, even their hearts talk to each other, and the thought is so corny he wants to cry. Yeah… he wants to cry because it’s so corny, that’s it.

Richie, taking one arm from around Eddie to reach for his beer, keeps talking with Ben like that, with Eddie’s arms wrapped around him as Eddie occasionally—okay, more than occasionally—offers his opinion on marbles and flagstones and agates. Stan walks in to get another beer, and he and Eddie have an animated discussion about flooring that Eddie can’t help but take part in while waving one hand emphatically at Stan whenever he makes a point. His other arm is still around Richie. 

It’s almost absurd, talking with Ben with his arm wrapped around Eddie, who is his husband, in Ben’s kitchen, kissing Eddie’s temple now and again as he has a simultaneous discussion with Stan, and yet it’s not absurd at all. It’s really not that different from being in the clubhouse, Eddie all up in his space, and his friends all around again. Finally. 

He thinks of what a zombie he’d been from about junior year of high school onward without these guys, faking it and stuffing down his real personality, as if he’d sewn his mouth shut. Maybe, partly, he’d brought it on himself, but he’d done what he’d thought he had to do, and he has to forgive himself for that. Eventually.

Eddie is pressed against him and he’s leaning against the counter, feet apart, Eddie’s hips fitting neatly against his in a way that’s eventually going to be, he knows, distracting. But they’re not animals, and they haven’t seen all these people at once in years, so it’s not time to excuse themselves to their guest room just yet.

“By the way, Ben, yes I do,” Richie says, rubbing his hand idly up and down Eddie’s back.

“Do what?” Eddie asks. 

“Know what it’s like to get literally everything I want.”

“Yeah? You better.” Eddie shifts his hips minutely against Richie’s, and Richie stifles a laugh.

Bev walks in then, pressing a kiss to Richie’s cheek and then Eddie’s before getting herself a beer. She leans against the counter next to Ben, head against his shoulder, regarding them.

“Penny for your thoughts, Red,” Richie says to her. She squints. “What’s with the squinting? Vision problems? I can relate.”

“If I squint,” Bev says, “you guys look like you’re kids again.”

“You must be squinting really fucking hard, then.”

“I’m not.” She smiles, and takes a long drink. “You’re right there. You’re exactly the same. Only you’re happier. I can see it all through you.”

Richie shakes his head, swallowing against something rising in him that he can’t name, something that makes his heart flutter. He pulls Eddie closer to him in a brief squeeze. “No, yeah, it’s not the same. Eddie here wouldn’t have let me do this to him for this long back then.”

“I bet he would have,” Bev laughs, soft, cheeks flushed. 

“We’ll never know. Plus I think I would have spontaneously combusted if he did.”

“You know the first thing I asked Eddie when he told me he was gay?” she says, lowering her voice. It’s just she and Richie talking now, Eddie deeply engaged again with Stan and arguing his case with Ben interjecting, Bill and Mike talking about a book Mike recommended.

“What’s that?”

“I asked if he was going to look you up.” She looks at him closely, seeing too much as usual.

“And what did he say?”

“He said he thought you weren’t interested in hearing from him, so no.” Bev tilts her head, expectant. “Why did he think that, Richie? Why did you not want to hang out with us anymore?”

“I didn’t fucking _want_ to stop talking to you guys,” Richie says. “I didn’t think I had a choice. I couldn’t…. Look. I mean, maybe I made a mistake. When I made myself stop talking to Eddie and I made myself stop hanging out.” He shrugs. “Yeah. I can say that now. But Bev, please. Think about it. It was Derry, Maine. It was the Eighties. Hell, the Nineties weren’t any better. I was already getting beaten up and getting called a faggot as it was. Go back and tell that scared kid he needs to tell his best friend he’s loved him since kindergarten, that he needs to tell all their friends he likes boys. Tell everybody in school. The whole town.” There’s a defiant edge to his voice, and he’s pointing with the index finger of the hand wrapped around the beer. “You tell that kid, ‘Yeah, they’ll understand. It’ll be fine. You won’t get your ass kicked.’”

“Honey, I wish I could. I would have done anything for you, please know that. We all would.”

Richie swallows, hard. He lowers the beer and his index finger. “Yeah, I know that now.”

“You’re right, though, it was Derry. Richie, I’m so sorry it was so hard for you. For both of you.” Tears are welling in Bev’s eyes.

“No, no, no, don’t cry, Red.” Richie sets down his beer and takes up Eddie’s left hand with his own. “See? We’re married, it all worked out.”

“But it took so long.” Bev sniffs. Yeah, she’s had a few.

“Jesus, Bev, we’re not elderly. I haven’t blown out a knee or thrown my back out in bed yet. Or on the floor. Or on the couch. Or in the shower.”

“Neither have I,” Eddie adds. Ben, having overheard, is laughing silently, face red. “I do put him through his paces, though.”

“He does,” Richie agrees, nodding solemnly. “He really fuckin’ does. I mean, I’m not saying I’m not sore, on like, a regular basis.”

“I fully expect there to be an injury,” Eddie continues, “but I do have a first aid kit.”

“Of course you do,” Bev says, laughing, as Bill interjects, shaking his head, “Oh Jesus, now we have to hear sex jokes about Eddie from Richie. We’re approaching the singularity. I guess it was inevitable.” 

“Yeah, looks like it was.” Richie tightens his arm around Eddie, pulling him closer, and kisses him. “You might even say it was fate.”

Eddie, all dimples, tilts upward to kiss him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Thanks as always for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> So my friend Amy expressed to me her interest in seeing a fic about an adult virgin Richie (rather than Eddie, which is what we usually see), and I took up the challenge. Additionally, I wanted to write a no-Pennywise AU, so not only is the homophobia Richie encounters not clown-enhanced, there's no magical memory wipe to cause him to forget about Eddie. Richie's spent his life closeted and pining after Eddie, with a touch of denial about it, and he cut himself off from the other Losers. Drugs and suicidal thoughts mentions are both brief.


End file.
